LABORATORY OF ORNITHOLOGY
CORNELL UNIVERSITY
ITHACA, NEW YORK

CORNELL
LAB of ORNITHOLOGY

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at Sapsucker Woods
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Illustration of Bank Swallow by Louis Agassiz Fuertes

FUERTES ROOM

Cornell University

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ON THE BIRDS’ HIGHWAY

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“OUR FRIENDS THE CHICKADEES.”

ON THE
BIRDS’ HIGHWAY

BY

REGINALD HEBER HOWE, Jr.

With Photographic Illustrations by the Author and a
Frontispiece in Color from a Painting by
LOUIS AGASSIZ FUERTES

BOSTON
SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY

1899

EVER TES
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CopyriGHT, 1899, By SMatt, Maynarp & Company

TO MY
MOTHER AND FATHER
THIS BOOK

Is LOVINGLY INSCRIBED

Preface

Ir is my hope that these little Sketches
may lead others to enjoy all that I have
enjoyed ‘‘ On the Birds’ Highway.”

The appendix contains a number of lists
of birds from those localities treated in the
body of the book, which may be of some
value to field ornithologists.

I wish to thank Mr. Louis Agassiz
Fuertes for his great kindness in present-
ing me with the frontispiece, the Editors
of the Boston “Commonwealth” and
“Transcript”? for their permission to re-
print a number of the chapters which have
appeared in their papers, and also many
other friends for kind assistance in vari-

ous ways.
REGINALD HEBER HOWE, Jr.

Loncwoop, MassacHUsETTS,
April, 1899.

Contents.

Winter Birps

Decemser BY Lanp anD SEA
On THE Sanps oF Ipswicu
Amonc THE FoorHILis
Wuere Fepruary Is SPRING

. Famitrar anp Unramiziar Birp Sones
. In tHE Mount Hope Lanps .

Unper THE SHapow oF WacHusETT
A Meapow CuHRonIcLe
Swattow Ponp .

. In rae Lanp or Norumpeca
XII.
XIII.
XIV.

Summer Birps
Atonc THE Beacu .
Late SUMMER IN THE ADIRONDACKS

APPENDIX. Locat Lists .

BRISTOL, R. I.
HUBBARDSTON, MASS.
CHATEAUGAY LakE, N. Y-

107
114

121

134
153

List of Illustrations

Full-page

PAGE
Chickadees Frontispiece
Mount Hope on Narragansett Bay 13
The Ipswich Dunes 21
The Presidential Range 28
Rock Creek 45
American Robin (from painting) 54
An Osprey’s Nest 68
Mount Wachusett 79
A Meadow Clearing go
Swallow Pond 98
Islesborough 106
A Beach Opening 115
The Atlantic 120
The Camp at the Spring 135

Marginals

Screech Owls (from life) 2
Red-shouldered Hawk 4
Loon 6
Lapland Longspur 8

Xiv LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Northern Shrike with Redpoll
Myrtle Warbler

Short-eared Owl

American Herring Gull
Red-bellied Nuthatch

Hudson Bay Chickadee
Red-breasted Merganser
Cardinal

Mourning Dove

Turkey Vulture

Song Sparrow

White-throated Sparrow
American Woodcock

Pheebe (from life)

Downy Woodpecker’s Nest (a situ)
Belted Kingfisher

American Robin on Nest (from life)
Kingbird’s Nest (2 stv)
Towhee

Green Heron

Baltimore Oriole’s Nest
American Crow (from life)
Black-crowned Night Heron
Sparrow Hawk

Snowy Owl

American Golden-eye

Bobolink

Spotted Sandpiper’s Nest (i sitw)
Wilson’s Tern

Wilson’s Tern’s Nest (77 situ)

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Least Tern

Bank Swallow

Laughing Gull

Heath Hen

Bald Eagle

Great Blue Heron

Canadian Warbler

Work of Pileated Woodpecker
Semipalmated Plover

Barred Owl

American Three-toed Woodpecker

XV

PAGE
128
130
131
132
137
138
139
I4I
143
148
149

On the Birds’ Highway

I

WINTER BIRDS

HE sky is gray, a few great snow-

flakes are softly falling on the
autumn-painted leaves; it is the first
storm of the winter, and, as the flakes grow
thicker and thicker and the shadows of
a November afternoon stretch out their
dusky fingers across the whitening ground,
another year’s foliage is laid to rest. The
sun is a tardy riser now and the birds tardy
risers too. How changed the woodland
as we stand looking out across the meadow
to the woods! ‘The earth has donned
her polar robes and greets the fiery sun
immaculate. Shall we break that even
mantle, pierced by weeds and scarred only
by birds’ and mammals’ tread? If we
are to wish our friends good morning, we
must, though as we part the virgin snow

I

2 ON THE BIRDS’ HIGHWAY

we feel we are intruding and wish to walk
bareheaded into Nature’s sanctum — win-
ter woods.

Let us first greet our resident friends
and then the visitors — though perhaps
it would be more po-
lite to welcome the
weary travellers first.
We have ploughed
our way scarcely a
dozen yards when
from among the sere
weeds we catch the
sweet notes of a flock
of goldfinches. They
have donned their
winter garments too
and are gleaning a morning meal in truly
boreal style. A flock of crows flap slowly
by, their dark shadows on the snow be-
traying them. They are wanderers now
and must depend for their livelihood on
the beach where the kind ocean leaves its
bounty or on orchard or field where un-
gathered apples, corn and vegetables can
be mined in the snow.

We have reached a thicket of cat brier
with alders bordering it, and hear

AS

WINTER BIRDS 3

‘¢a tiny voice hard by,
Gay and polite, a cheerful cry,
Chic-chicadeedee; saucy note
Out of sound heart and merry throat.’’

Of course this joyful little fellow who sings
his name from one year’s end to the other
is an old friend of all of us, and as he
scurries about,

«« Hurling defiance at vast death;

This scrap of valor just for play

Fronts the north-wind in waistcoat gray,”’
we read fearlessness in his twinkling eye
and warm friendship in his actions. From
this protecting patch of growth appears
another sweet-voiced bird — the song spar-
row; later in the day while the winter is
young and when the sun remembers its
summer friends we may hear him singing
softly to himself — singing of the spring
to be.

A few minutes more and we are in the
woods, bare now but beautiful, for we see
the grace of their many arms, which seem
to be imploring the north wind that rat-
tles them so cruelly to give them back
their leaves of which it has just stripped
them. As we are welcomed from the
alders and birches by the chickadee we are

4 ON THE BIRDS’ HIGHWAY

welcomed to the woods by the blue jay,
who stands with acorn in his claw shout-
ing loudly his imitation of the red-shoul-
dered hawk between each savage peck at
the nut.

«< His character a tonic,
His future a dispute;
Unfair an immortality
That leaves this neighbor out.’’

What was that nasal “quank” that inter-
rupted the jay’s performance? It is the
white-breasted nuthatch climb-
ing head down upon an old
ine stump; he must have
little blood in his veins, espe-
cially if he sleeps upside down
as it is hinted, or he would
have apoplexy and might wear
a scarlet patch on his head as
does the male downy wood-
pecker who is hitching like a
respectable bird up a neighbor-
ing maple stub. We have met
one of those merry parties that
always go hand in hand through the win-
ter woods. There is the nuthatch and
downy and a number of chickadees and
the monotonous brown creeper is climb-

WINTER BIRDS 5

ing his spiral ladder about an oak, and
from a patch of young spruces we hear the
clear note of the golden-crowned king-
lets, fearless little sparks of life and true
acrobats. Where the path runs down the
hillside to the brook we flush a ruffed
grouse from the underbrush and, when the
rising “whir” is over, with set wings he
sails off through the birches and is gone.
A flock of winter robins are feeding on
the vermilion berries of the black alder
by the brook and to hear their glad shout
is worth our long walk through the snow.

Returning by another route over a bare
hill where the snow has drifted against
the wall we find in each gap between the
stones or in the gate-ways the tracks of
chipmunk* and mice. Something has
walked the top of the old wall too, for on
each white-capped boulder four toes have
pressed, for which Bob White is probably
responsible.

The snow has many a story to tell as
we tramp along: a rabbit has taken a
turn about his “brier patch,” squirrels
have wandered in the woods, and a crow

1 As far as my experience goes, the chipmunk is only
dormant in the very coldest weather of the winter.

6 ON THE BIRDS’ HIGHWAY

has crossed our path. From a few scat-
tered apple trees we hear the flicker call-
ing. ‘These old trees are his best winter
friends and supply him with both food
and lodgings. The downy loves the
gnarled limbs also; but his cousin the
hairy, at least about the more settled
country, prefers deeper woods.

It will pay us to make a circuit through
the cedars before we cross the marsh and
the bridge, for the only common
winter warbler, the yellow rump
—and he is rare enough, —
often spends his long winter
days among their friendly em-
brace. If he is here, he is very
disobliging this ferent, We
do not even see a blue jay about
the old hut; if we were farther north we
would certainly see the other jay, — the
moose bird, by the door.

The marsh is cold and drear now; the
storm has left, however, great patches of
grass uncovered and the meadow lark is
difficult to flush to wing into the biting air
and settles down in the nearest cover
without a note. There is no loon in
sight either up or down the river to-day,

WINTER BIRDS i

although at times through the winter when
it is open we may catch a glimpse of one
floating on its icy waters.

‘Toward sunset we may hear the “quawk ”’
of a night heron as he flies over, or at
the fireside be startled by the whinny of a
screech or the hoot of a barred owl perched
on a dead stub and whose outline is traced
against the cold moonlight of a winter’s
sky.

««Or Arctic creature, dimly stirred

By tropic hint, — some travelled bird
Imported to the wood.

Far back in September, when the summer
foliage was just changing to its autumn
splendor, we welcomed our first north-
ern winter visitor, the snow bird, and on
throughout the cold season he will be one
of our closest friends and we shall bid
him farewell in early May with regret
although his place be filled with many a
gayer songster. We met on our ramble
the brown creeper who is really a visitor
from the north, and beyond the very few
that spend the summer with us here in
certain localities in Massachusetts, the
majority do not arrive within our woods
until October.

3 ON THE BIRDS’ HIGHWAY

If we were to go to the beaches, dunes

or meadows along the shores during the
winter, especially in the early or
latter part, we would find run-
ning hither and thither a jolly
company of shore larks with
their comrades the snow bunt-

ings and perhaps a stray lapland
longspur. They are all beautiful birds,
and as they wheel up and down or dodge
between the driftwood their plumage is
displayed to the best advantage; the larks
with yellow breasts and black collars, the
buntings, “ snowflakes ” as they are called,
but like snowflakes fallen on the earth
where winter sunshine shows small dark
patches through.

Another guest from boreal regions, one
that makes your heart glad with his sweet
low song in midwinter, from out the
thicket, is the tree sparrow and many a
bleak day this chestnut-crowned pedestrian
and the chickadee have been my only
companions.

On Christmas day last year while mak-
ing my way over log and brook, a little
brown bird whirled from my feet and
bobbed out of sight behind a log. A rare

WINTER BIRDS 9

bird here in late December and January, I
thought, as the saucy winter wren appeared
around the end of the old log. The
chickadee’s cousin, the Hudson Bay tit,
I have never met with on my tramps in
this locality, but he has made flying trips
to all three of the southern New England
States and I hope to meet him soon on
the birds’ highway.

Those birches which but yesterday
stood above the immaculate snow with
buds intact, are now alive with redpolls
who shower us and the snow with thou-
sands of calyces as they rob the trees of
their tender buds; fearless, dear little
fluffy fellows and typical birds of a winter
scene. In yonder hemlocks and among
the sere “stick tight” weeds at their foot
a flock of siskins or pine finches are feed-
ing and are murmuring their glad notes
for the season. On our morning tramp
we may meet the brigand shrike who 1s
in the act of impaling a song sparrow or
goldfinch on a thorn or in a wild chase
after a junco. Although a murderer he
is interesting — murderers always interest
the public—and yet late in March we
may hear his mocking-bird-like song echo-

Io ON THE BIRDS’ HIGHWAY

ing from the thicket, a true musical per-
formance that at our first meeting we
would have hardly credited to his blood-
thirsty throat.

Wandering, erratic, welcome travellers,
here to-day, to-morrow many miles to the
north or southward, are
the crossbills ; one may
ane them stripping the larches

r pines in our woodland, as
ae Maceiils as if they ‘hiael
been there all their lives, in
any month of the year, though
their home is in the great con-
| iferous forests of the north. Curious
birds, and if only obliging as they often
are, one can watch them shell the cones
with their singular bills, so well adapted
to their work.

It is one of those still biting mornings
in January when the sun makes no 1m-
pression on the snow-drift. We are
standing by a clump of pines on a hillside
scanning the snow-bound country, our
hands thrust deep into our pockets, when
with the quickness of thought we are
\ carried back to September when we sat

alert in our marsh blind calling the pass-

WINTER BIRDS II

ing yellow-legs down to our decoys.
There is a chorus of plaintive whistles
from the heavens; then with a “whir” a
flock of pine grosbeaks alight amid the
pines. Among the chrome yellow marked
young males and females we catch sight
of a few exquisite rosy adult males. They
have arrived, they are everywhere in the
elms, spruces and barberry bushes. The
incessant crackling of their bills as they
split bud after bud, or the chaff on the
ground betrays their presence. You might
have tramped many a mile yesterday and
not have seen a bird, but they have come
in the night by hundreds, dropping out of
a clear sky.

The sun is sinking slowly in the west,
the bleak March wind is driving song
sparrow and junco to cover and the great
oaks stand out against the tinted sky.
This last fierce battle of winter does not
suggest the awaking of spring on the
morrow but the next moon will shine on a
new world,

<¢ while, through the veins of the earth, riots the
ichor of Spring.”

Ii

DECEMBER BY LAND AND SEA

roads of an old Rhode Island town
I splashed, as the southwest wind drove
the cold drizzle of a December’s storm
against my face. There are lessons to
be learned in all weathers out-of-doors,
and Nature puts on new aspects for sash
phase of the heavens. The roadside was
aflame in places with the vermilion berries
of the black alder, the dark crimson spires
of the sumac gave another bit of color to
the foreground. The waters of Narra-
gansett Bay were leaden save for a few
waves that foamed into white caps on
the further shore. Mount Hope was
wrapped in mist as were the Tiverton and
the Rhode Island hills. Although the
hollows were piled with the glory of the
autumn woods, there was a great deal of
color still warming the winter landscape
with its ruddy glow.

| Dae one of the muddy rain-soaked

“AVG LLASNVOVUAYN NO ddOPT LNNOJ]

DECEMBER BY LAND AND SEA 15

The rain seemed to have brought out
the colors of fallen leaf, twig, and meadow.
The tops of the young birches looked
smoky and purple, the orange shoots of
the willows stood out against the gray
woods, the bay bushes of the fallow land
were silvery and gave light to the cedars
they stood over against on the hill.

A migration of crows flew in wavering
line from the woods on the western slope
of the Mount in a southwest-
erly course, beating into the
storm all day long. Hundreds
must have passed over during
the hours of daylight. By a
wayside pond I started a flock
of myrtle warblers and a few scattered
chickadees. This species of warbler win-
ters in fair numbers throughout these
Mount Hope lands. They were in the
open, as the weather although stormy was
mild, but we find them under the protec-
tion of the cedars when winter rages.

As I entered a strip of dark oak woods,
where last summer I gathered the death-
like flowers of the Indian pipe, the wind
hauled to the northwest and a great dark
cloud poured down rain and wind, swing-

16 ON THE BIRDS’ HIGHWAY

ing the coasting schooner that lay at
anchor in mid-stream in a twinkling, and
making the woods roar and crack with its
fury. A rift in the nimbus clouds fol-
lowed the squall and the sun broke
through and bathed in light the Tiverton
hills. What a change had taken place !
The undergrowth sparkled in the sun-
light and the sheep that had huddled
together in the right angle of a wall began
to crop the jewelled stubble. As the
heavens were cleared of the dark clouds,
the bay, a great mirror of the sky, began
to reflect its glorious blue and against the
scurrying storm a faint rainbow hung
over the Mount.

Three flickers left the eaves of a hay-
cap roof as I passed and a single herring
gull sailed back and forth over the shining
waters of the transformed Narragansett.
Among the tall ungathered, but still green,
cabbages of the garden a song sparrow
lisped; his summer environment had
slowly faded away until only the box hedge,
the cabbages and the bare bean poles re-
mained; but the hedge gave forth its
same delicious fragrance notwithstanding

he did not pipe his song.

DECEMBER BY LAND AND SEA 17

As the few wisps of clouds in the west-
ern sky were tinged with pink, winter gull
after winter gull appeared out of the blood-
red afterglow and floated out over the
waters of the bay. The sky line in the
east was a vivid purplish hue, while above
it, glowed the reflected exquisite pink of
the higher western heavens.

On the eleventh I took the beach road
out of the then deserted and quiet town
of Newport. There were no bathers ex-
cept a few coot and an old loon that
floated just outside the surf. I fol-
lowed the edge of the shale around
Easton’s Point. A dozen or more coast-
ing schooners were scudding to the south-
ward under a fresh nor’west breeze. A
square-rigger was hull down far off
Cormorant Rock and West Island Light
loomed up beyond Sachuest Point. A
few red-necked and horned grebes were
swimming about the rocks and two red-
breasted mergansers flew out to sea. A
few “beds” of coot lay off shore a mile
or so. The ocean looked just as it does
in summer save for the absence of sand-
pipers — for not even a purple was to be
seen —and for the presence of the grebes

18 ON THE BIRDS’ HIGHWAY

and other sea-fowl. Rounding the point,
I entered the sand dunes back of the sec-
ond beach in hope of seeing a short-eared
or snowy owl. Hanging Rock
stood out against the sky, a
bold bit of Nature’s stone-
work. Bishop Berkeley is said
to have written his sermons in
the hollow of this rock; it
stands two hundred yards back
of the beach with the dunes
stretching between; we find
among the -Bishop’s writings
that the ocean broke at his feet and the
sandhills that to-day roll to its base are
evidence of the truth of his words. Not
an owl did we meet in the dunes, or a
snow bunting or a shore lark on our way
back along the beach.

Among the junipers in the steep eastern
slope of Mount Hope, where the wind
did not reach and the sun lay, on the
morning of the twelfth, three crossbills
wandered and a flock of myrtle warblers
“chucked” as I stumbled through the
underbrush. Terrace after terrace of
quartz robed in moss formed the descent
to the clearing.

DECEMBER BY LAND AND SEA 1g

Rhode Island looked as lovely and
peaceful as ever, although its fields were
sere, its woodlands brown; the junipers
and the bay gave it its striking colors.
Nature never offends the eye, we never
fault or dislike the coloring of a sunset,
criticise a landscape, or any child of
Nature. Perfect, with all its variety, it
comes from the hand of Him who made it.

III

ON THE SANDS OF IPSWICH

FIVE-MILE drive in the early

morning of a winter’s day over roll-
ing country, with few trees to offer any
protection from the bleak winds, in a
rickety buggy drawn by a still more rick-
ety horse, with two other occupants of its
narrow seat beside yourself, does not sound
attractive, to say the least. The shay, if
you so choose to call it, had a decided
“flavor of mild decay,” and I must say I
thought the hour named for its ruin was
near at hand, if it did not arrive en route.
The only object of interest on the road
was an extremely small building pointed
out to us by our driver as the only school-
house in the locality. A “regular knowl-
edge box” he called it. Reaching the
last summit, the dunes lay before us to the
east, one wind-tossed ocean of sand; to
the north the Ipswich and to the south
the Essex River emptied into the dark,

"SANA HOTA\Sd] AHL

ON THE SANDS OF IPSWICH 23

gray Atlantic, while between us and the
dunes stretched a broad salt marsh, dotted
with duck blinds, to the sea.

The white tower of Ipswich Light rose
from among the sandhills, and beyond
Bug Light stood on the crest of a dune.
Our journey ended at a quaint old house
on the shores of the Essex River, sur-
rounded on all sides by the shifting sands.
Having deposited our luggage in a room
whose floor shelved in every direction
possible, though anything even or level
here would have looked strange and un-
natural, we started for the beach beyond
the dunes. Herring gulls crowded the
uncovered bars by the hundreds, and now
and then a few ducks would fly low over
the water, passing from one feeding ground
to another.

The bare ribs of a wreck protruded from
the shore, the keel having long ago been
buried by the encroaching sands. Large
flocks of snow buntings hopped over the
seaweed or sat muffled up on the drift-
wood, and when startled would fly farther
down the beach, uttering a chorus of
short, sharp notes. Shore larks also were
numerous here, running around tufts of

24 ON THE BIRDS’ HIGHWAY

stubble; they are generally to be found
in company with the former species. One
of the most noticeable features of these
dunes are the myriads of tracks, both of
7 bird and mammal, that trace their
eee surfaces. Crows, gulls, larks and

I buntings could be followed by

gir their footprints ;
and skunks, too,
had done some
midnight hunting,
while the small
tracks of field mice
marked their wan-
dering about the sand.

Small patches of stunted firs and cran-
berry grew in the hollows between the
hills, giving color to the landscape, and
the ridges themselves were covered with a
thin growth of yellow grasses (Ammophila
arenaria), the seed tassels of which were
eagerly sought for by the larks and bunt-
ing. Great flocks of crows crossed and
recrossed the neck, cawing incessantly.
Four meadow larks were seen several
times during the afternoon on the marsh-
lands of the Essex River. Gaining the
summit of the highest dune we watched

ON THE SANDS OF IPSWICH 25

the sun set behind the hills toward Ip-
swich, and the fourteenth of December
was a day of the past.

At half-past five o’clock on the follow-
ing morning we made our way out on to
the moonlit sandhills, whose weird undu-
lating outlines were yet indistinct in the
growing light; occasionally we would catch
a glimpse of Ipswich Light toward the
north, gilding the highest dunes. Stand-
ing ina pit dug the day before in the sand,
we waited to see what the advancing dawn
would bring us of interest. The tide was
far out, and the breaking of waves on
the distant, unseen bar, the crying of gulls
and the cawing of passing crows sounded
wild and uncanny. It was terribly cold.
By half-past six o’clock the east was all
aglow, and at seven the sun appeared
above Cape Ann. A large flock of bunt-
ings flew restlessly about far up the beach,
and two horned larks played their game
of hide and seek around the tufts of with-
ered grass. We saw nothing of the Ips-
wich sparrows. Following the path that
runs back to the house we heard the call
of a solitary flicker, — certainly a strange
place for him to be spending the winter.

26 ON THE BIRDS’ HIGHWAY

There were no red crossbills among the
firs, but the modest song of a tree spar-
row often broke the silence.

At nine o’clock we left the dunes be-
hind us, white-capped by the touch of the
morning sun.

‘AONVY IVILNAGISIYG JH

IV

AMONG THE FOOTHILLS

E left Boston from the Union

Station via the western division
of the Boston and Maine Railroad at one
on the afternoon of December the twenty-
sixth. We were bound northward for
Shelburne, New Hampshire, a small town,
consisting of some twenty-eight farms, on
the Androscoggin River, about two miles
from the Maine and sixty from the Cana-
dian border.

The sky was gray, foreboding rain or
snow. From the car window the passing
country looked bare and monotonous.
Second growth white and pitch pine,
birch and a few scattered hemlock com-
posed the passing woodland panorama.
Over the Merrimac a single herring gull
was flying and large flocks of crows were
feeding in the meadows. After cross-
ing the Saco River we began to notice
small patches of snow lying in the shaded

30 ON THE BIRDS’ HIGHWAY

corners and hollows; even the smallest
brooks, however, were open and running
merrily. Just at dusk we arrived at Old
Orchard Beach; the surf was breaking
upon the sands and the Atlantic looked
cold, ashen and forbidding. A change of
cars was necessary at Portland, where we
crossed to the Grand Trunk Station.
Standing on the platform, we looked out
over Casco Bay. Only a few of its three
hundred and sixty-five islands were visible
through the darkness, for night had shut
down in earnest. After another trouble-
some change of cars at Lewiston Junc-
tion we reached Shelburne at half after
eight o’clock and were met by Mr. B
in a double mountain wagon.

The farm lay but a mile across the
Androscoggin River, but as the ice was
running we were obliged to drive three
miles or so up the valley, cross the only
bridge over the river near Shelburne, and
drive back down the valley to the farm.
When the river is solid with ice or ford-
able as in summer, the drive from the
station is about one mile instead of seven.
It was drizzling and the road was ankle
deep in mud. The horses took us gallop-

AMONG THE FOOTHILLS 31

ing up one hill and down the next, bring-
ing distant mist-covered foothills in view.
We reached the farm at last and after a
hearty supper turned in for the night,
while the wind roared about the house
and drove the rain in sheets against the
window panes.
‘¢ The wintry west extends his blast,
And hail and rain does blaw;

Or, the stormy north sends driving forth
The blinding sleet and snaw.’’

When we peered from our window be-
fore sunrise the wind was blowing half a
gale from the westward, driving rain across
the meadows of the valley and snow
higher up upon the hills, a far from pro-
mising sight. Howe by half after
eight o’clock blue patches of sky appeared
overhead and the base of the distant foot-
hills became visible. An hour later, the
sky had almost cleared and we started out
across a small clearing and up a lumber
road, down which a small brook from the
hills above came tumbling over fallen logs
and stones. Half way up the hillside we
reached a deserted lumber camp, an odd
affair built of logs and roofed with rough
boards, the chinks filled with grasses. We

32 ON THE BIRDS’ HIGHWAY

pushed on farther up the hillside, and
entered another lumber road running along
the brow of a ridge. Usnea “ moss”
hung from the great spruces, and the
beautifully white boles of the canoe-birch
made the woods a scene of striking gran-
deur and beauty. Here we met a flock
of chickadees and red-bellied
nuthatches. A little farther up
the road we found a small flock
of crossbills feeding among the
cones at the top of the spruces.
The woods about Shelburne are
of mixed growth; white, Norway and
pitch pine, spruce, canoe and yellow
birch, beech, ash, balsam fir, hemlock
and red oak are the most common spe-
cies; in fact, Shelburne is noted for its
variety of trees.

After following along the ridge, we be-
gan to descend again into the valley.
Looking out over the tree-tops below us,
the mist-hung sides of Mounts Moriah
and Winthrop were seen to the southward.
Leaving the woods, we tramped out over
the meadows along the Androscoggin and
started a large flock of snow buntings con-
taining at least fifty individuals, from the

AMONG THE FOOTHILLS 33

ploughed ground. The wind blew fur-
lously, taking one nearly off one’s feet,
and, catching the buntings as soon as they
took wing, swept them like snowflakes
before us.

In the afternoon we again set out, this
time toward the eastward and along the
main road, but we met no birds of any
kind. On the shores of a pond at the
foot of Crow’s Nest Mountain, great
clumps of pitcher plants were growing,
their tubular leaves filled to the brim with
ice-cold water. One must go into the
deep woods and follow the lumber-roads
to find bird life in the winter season.
During the morning we heard and saw
many red squirrels, but the grays were
entirely absent.

After we returned, sitting at my window
I looked over the valley toward the south,
across the Androscoggin from whose op-
posite banks rose the foothills of Mount
Moriah. Olivet was in the foreground and
Mount Moriah itself towered 4500 feet
above and behind it, while fifteen miles
to the southwest the base of Mount
Madison and at intervals its peak, the
sharpest within view, and that of Mount

3

34 ON THE BIRDS’ HIGHWAY

Adams beyond, appeared from out the
white, fleecy clouds that enveloped them.
Mount Madisonis 5759 feetabove the level
of the sea and Mount Adams 5700 feet.
The sun went down behind the foothills at
about half after three o’clock, tinging the
scurrying clouds with golden light; and the
rolling outline of the foothills stood sharply
out against the fading light of a mid-winter
sky. Great cakes of ice covered the banks
of the river, giving a touch of white to
the gray lowlands and in
seeming contrast to the then
black rolling hills.

The sky was covered on
the morning of the twenty-
eighth with dark clouds,
rifts only now and then
visible ; Mount Moriah, the
highest mountain not under
cloud, was in full view be-
fore us. We had planned
a trip, the night before, to
visit a lumber camp some six miles back in
the woods; we left the farm at about half
after eight o’clock bound thither. Our
guide led us to the north-westward toward
Bald Cap Mountain, at whose base the

AMONG THE FOOTHILLS 35

camp was situated. Striking across a small
clearing, we found the path, marked by
blazes along the side of Mount Ingalls.
Chickadees were numerous, but their Hud-
son Bay cousins were nowhere to be seen.
Deer tracks were occasionally found and
a few red or white winged crossbills were
feeding in the tops of the spruces. Many
ice-fringed brooks came tumbling down
from above as we tramped along the hill-
side. ‘‘ He sendeth the springs into the
valleys, which run among the hills,” and
they seemed to be doing their best to fol-
low out the Scriptural teaching.

We paused for a moment to look off
over the valley. The clouds had some-
what lifted, Mounts Moriah, Adams, and
Madison were visible to their summits,
but Mount Washington was still en-
veloped in cloud about half-way down its
sides. Just before joining a logging road,
we started a partridge from among the
fallen birch logs. Following the path up
the gulch, we crossed Mill Brook, and off
through the trees we could see sphere it
plunged over a cliff on the side of Bald
Cap. Reaching the lumber camp, we
found horse-shoeing going on. We also

36 ON THE BIRDS’ HIGHWAY

learned to our regret that the Canada jay,
during the thaw about a week before, had
disappeared, probably going back farther
into the woods toward Lake Umbagog.
We remained at this camp but a few
minutes and then retraced our steps to
another, farther back down the gorge,
owned by our guide. This camp proved
to be a smaller one, consisting of three
log huts, a stable, out-heuse, and bunk
and cook room. Only three of the
lumbermen had returned from their Christ-
mas vacation. The dinner we partook
of there, was the only thing I do not care
to remember about my Shelburne trip.
Darkness pervaded the room, but I re-
member seeing the following articles of
food, of which I ate most sparingly :
wretched beef, black potatoes, leaden bis-
cuit, and molasses, all served in dirty tin
dishes in the most uninviting manner.
I felt relieved on leaving this camp, and
wished its occupants joy during the com-
ing winter. I inwardly felt that for me
to.remain there meant starvation.

After regaining the logging road our
guide left us to return to the farm by the
quickest route, and we sauntered along

AMONG THE FOOTHILLS 37

in hope of seeing more bird-life. A few
scattered flocks of crossbills, large com-
panies of chickadees and golden-crowned
kinglets infested the pines. My com-
panion decided to brave the waters of
Mill Brook and disappeared in the pines
on the opposite bank. I had worn moc-
casins and the rough walking had made
me somewhat footsore, so leaving the
gorge and its lumber camps I made the
road and started homeward, seeing but
two blue jays during the walk.

The trees that are felled on the foot-
hills are of the following varieties and
used for the purposes named: Spruce,
which is crushed and used for paper mak-
ing; yellow birch and rock maple for
bobbins ; hemlock for planks ; and canoe
birch for spools ; and the bark of the hem-
lock is also shipped by rail for tannin.

It was not until the morning of the
twenty-ninth that we were able to see the
summit of Mount Washington. The
sky was then clear and a hoar frost cov-
ered the meadows and pine branches.
Tramping up an old lumber road on the
hillside behind the farm, we obtained a
splendid view of the Presidential Range,

38 ON THE BIRDS’ HIGHWAY

Mount Madison in the foreground, Adams,
Jefferson, Clay and Washington rising in
order behind it. The peak a short dis-
tance down the side of Washington was
snowbound.

A few crossbills, two blue jays and a
merry company of chickadees, red and
white breasted nuthatch, were among the
spruces. The little red squirrels were very
numerous, and so tame that when my
companion made a squeaking sound they
approached within a few feet of us, their
bright eyes twinkling and their bodies
twitching with nervous excitement. We
passed a deserted lumber camp and flushed
a “ partridge” from some hemlock boughs
about its dooryard. The loud tattooing
of a woodpecker attracted us and we soon
found a female hairy and three downies
about a few old stubs. The difference in
size between these two species is quite
noticeable when the birds are seen to-
gether. We returned to the farm down
the old logging road. Great piles of
hemlock bark and corded wood ran along
each side of the path, and again a grouse
sprang from the thicket and whirred into
denser cover.

AMONG THE FOOTHILLS 39

In the afternoon we tramped up another
lumber road toward Mount Ingalls. One
is struck, in wandering through the woods
on these foothills, with the variety of trees
and mosses. I could name but few of the
mosses, but there were some of lovely
yellow and silver color and texture, and a
curious burnt-looking moss clung to the
boulders. Evergreen was also plentiful,
and “ peat-moss” grew in patches through
the woods. The nuthatches were every-
where, as in the morning, and the differ-
ence between the notes of the two species
was quite marked, the red-breasted being
yan, yan, yan, repeated often so many times
that you wonder when the bird takes
breath; the white-breasted had a longer
quank, quank.

It seemed to be our fortune to meet
hairy woodpeckers on the twenty-ninth,
for on entering an old apple orchard back
of one of the farms, a male was climbing
about a small tree. Higher up in the
woods we saw another male, and when
returning a young male was tapping on
the posts of a log fence, while in a small
clearing the mournful whistle of a red
crossbill caught my ear. He was flying

40 ON THE BIRDS’ HIGHWAY

over toward the south, and the rays of
the setting sun behind the mountains
lighted up his bright red plumage so that
he fairly seemed to burn.

Anchor ice formed during the night of
the twenty-eighth and ninth on the bottom
of the Androscoggin, so
~ that a canoe trip had to
sS be given up. Just before
dark a sheldrake passed,
flying east down the river
valley ; as long as the river
remains open, one may
now and then see this spe-

cies about Shelburne.

When the snow is deep upon the moun-
tains, the deer feed upon the boughs of
the hubble-bush and young birch; we
found during our tramps trees and bushes
off which they had dined. Small flocks
of pine siskins were heard twice along the
edge of the clearings.

On the last day of our visit we again
went up the same logging road back of
the farm. As usual, by the camp we
started a grouse, and among the spruces
the nuthatches, chickadees, and kinglets
were very numerous. With a birch call

AMONG THE FOOTHILLS 41

—that is, a thin piece of paper birch-bark
stretched between two small sticks —I
brought a half dozen blue jays in the
trees above our heads, where they bobbed
about screaming, with open beak and quiv-
ering wings. How I wished they were
Canada jays!

A few crossbills crossed the sky above
the spruces. These crossbills I found far
from tame; in fact, so wild that but in
one instance was I sure which species
they were. Perhaps the mildness of the
weather was the cause of their unsocia-
bility. The Presidential Range could be
seen splendidly that morning. A dis-
covery that puzzled me a good deal
when walking up the logging road down
which were the frozen waters of a brook,
was that from the bottom half way up
the hillside the ice remained hard all
day, while farther and higher up the
road it melted after ten o'clock in the
morning.

Our drive to the station was much more
pleasant than the one to the farm on the
night of the twenty-sixth. We started at
half after one o’clock, in the same double
wagon. As on our first trip, the Andros-

42 ON THE BIRDS’ HIGHWAY

coggin was not fordable, and we had to
drive far up the valley. Mount Wash-
ington, Boots Spur, and in fact the whole
Presidential Range, were visible to their
snow-clad summits; from the head of
Mine Brook bridge the mountain view
was superb.

After crossing the Androscoggin, we
headed back down the valley under the
shadow of Mount Winthrop, and passed
the town pound. As the wagon rolled
along I caught sight of two pine gros-
beaks, who flew into some lowtrees. A
few minutes later, far up on Mount Win-
throp, we saw a large flock, climbing
about the icy surface of Moses Ledge;
one of the grosbeaks was climbing among
the ice-bound hemlock boughs that had
lodged half way down the ledge. I col-
lected a specimen of this bird, and on
examining the stomach post mortem I
found in it, strange to say, small pieces
of ice, —a means of getting water, no
doubt. These were the first pine gros-
beaks we had seen, and I believe that
they had left the comtheen side of the
valley and sought the northern and its
cooler woods.

AMONG THE FOOTHILLS 43

On reaching the station, we took the
train, and soon left Shelburne, the moun-
tains, the Androscoggin and the peaceful
valley in possession of the hardy lumber-
men.

Vv

WHERE FEBRUARY 1S SPRING

T is now well towards the end of

March; the first bluebird and the
robins and grackles have come, and while
I am listening to the voices of many song
sparrows from the thicket I seem to hear
the voices I heard a month ago many
miles to the southward in that land
where February is spring. Near the
boundary of the city of Washington, as
I journeyed toward the Zoological Park
on Rock Creek, on February 17th and
18th, now a ficnith ago, a song sparrow
was singing. They had been singing in
that region for a week or two, and the
voice was a pleasant reminder chat spring
opened with February there, although
here in Massachusetts almost another
moon awaited the sound of their chorus.

From the high bridge that spans Rock
Creek I was able to get a magnificent view
up the stream which ran tumbling over

MIIYQ WOOY

WHERE FEBRUARY IS SPRING 47

rock and log, twisting and turning be-
tween steep pine-clad hills toward the
southeast. Such a stream with such beau-
tiful environment should be clear as crys-
tal, but this was not; it was muddy and
tinged with reddish soil, over which it hur-
ried. The woods for a mile or more alon

the eastern bank were of scrub (Pinus vir-
gimiana) and pitch pine (Pinus rigida), and
it was while wandering leisurely through
these evergreens that I met two new ac-
quaintances, a tufted and a Carolina chick-
adee. They, too, were wandering along
from tree to tree, searching every crevice
in true Parus manner. The tufted, whose
perky crest gave him a decidedly piquant
air, kept in the upper branches and scolded
at my presence in hoarse, an-
gry tones, but the Carola
drew near and called ‘“ Chic-
adeedee”’ with seeming in-
difference, as if I had not a
better friend in the North by
the same name. In fact, I
had found a double of my
best bird friend, and the discovery, in Dr.
Hale’s words, certainly “undid me.” I
was pleased, however, to learn that Parus

48 ON THE BIRDS’ HIGHWAY

carolinensis had no such plaintive, sweet
“ Phoebe” note as our blackcap, but that
he called “ Phoebe-phcebe” in a hurried
and vulgar manner. I met a tufted later
in the day, and again next morning, when
he whistled his loud ‘ Whi-oo-whi-oo-
whi-oo” as long as I remained within
hearing.

During my tramp I saw thousands of
crows, much more sociable than New
England crows. I could walk by or
under them but a few yards away without
having them flap off; and in the genus
Corvus I made another discovery of a
new friend, for the woods resounded with
the hoarse, young-crow-like calls of the
fish crow, and it was only occasionally I
heard the good, loud, respectable caw of
our northern bird. But otherwise the
two species, as far aS appearances were
concerned, all went under the title of
simply crows. One is always glad to see
a familiar face or hear a voice he recog-
nizes among strangers. Thus I felt toward
the juncos and tree sparrows who greeted
me on all sides with their familiar song
—I heard them above all other strange
voices. Bobbing and skulking over and

WHERE FEBRUARY IS SPRING 49

under rock and log, I caught sight of a
winter wren. He had claimed an off-
shoot brook of the creek, and alone he
had remained in winter quarters. As I
passed his domain he sang a snatch from
his song, and all the woods looked green.

I left the creek where a stone bridge
crossed it, and from a back garden of a
tumble-down house I heard a song that
I recognized as belonging to a bird I had
once heard trying to lift his voice above
the tumult of songs in a city bird store.
A pair of cardinals were sole proprietors
of this deserted garden, and they were
worthy of a garden to themselves. One’s
eyes, in the North, are rarely filled with
such an animated bit of color, and the
song was worth a long walk to hear.
About the old house and bridge, bird-
life seemed to centre. Tree sparrows were
singing softly as they bathed in an over-
flowed hollow and a single white-throat
scarcely lifted his own song above his
breath; nevertheless, he was to me a bit
of Maine grafted into the South. I heard
a faint scratching beneath a mountain lau-
rel (Kalmia latifolia) thicket and stooping
to look for the performer, hoping to find

4

50 ON THE BIRDS’ HIGHWAY

a fox sparrow, I heard above my head
from the lower limbs of an overhanging
beech tree a loud ringing song, followed
by a shower of bird epithets. This burst
of sound proceeded from two Carolina
wrens who, with perpendicular tails and
bowing heads, were bouncing about above
me. They had all the bearing of the
wren I had left down the creek and of the
house and marsh wrens I am on such good
terms with here, but they were something
more of an opera-glass and decidedly
more, of an ear-full.

Can winter still have Massachusetts
within its grasp? I said to myself on the
morning of February 18th, when I left the
cars at Chevy Chase, Maryland, and set
out over the rolling hills, where from every
side I was greeted by the voices of many
song sparrows. The thought had hardly
crossed my mind when the soft, sweet
notes of a bluebird fell like a benediction
on my ears. No, not of one bluebird, but
of fifty, for a flock were coming toward
me out of the gray sky, and not until
they had faded in the distance and the last
note had died from my ears did I cease to
strain my eyes toward the blessed country

WHERE FEBRUARY IS SPRING SI

to which they were carrying tidings of
spring. I have not seen sucha flock since
the direful Southern blizzard of 1895.
Hope filled me for the future generations
of bluebirds.

From the opposite crest of a hill the
whistle of wings again drew my attention
to earth. A flock of mourn-
ing doves were disappearing
with wonderful rapidity.
They regained their feeding
ground while I tramped over
other hills, for I flushed
them again on my return.
In the valleys between the hills, where

enerally a brook flowed among a tangle
of blackberry and scrub, I met another
pair of cardinals, a tufted tit, hundreds
of song and tree sparrows, besides a single
fox sparrow. Crows, the greater percent-
age fish crows, were always in sight, but
my new and rather uncouth friends of the
morning, — for they came near enough to
be called friends, —I saw only occasion-
ally. The first was a turkey buzzard, —
for no particular reason so far as I can
see, a rare bird in southern New England,
who sat perched on a dead limb and
as I approached stretched his wings above

52 ON THE BIRDS’ HIGHWAY

his back, and not until I had drawn quite
near did he fly. His white bill made an
excellent field mark. It was just before
returning to the city, when I was follow-
ing up a motley flock of song, fox and
tree sparrows and juncos
along the edge of a clearing,
that I saw what I took to
be a black vulture coming
toward me, and as he passed
I could see that his bill and
head were black. Off and
on through the morning I
would see a buzzard sailing
with tilting V-shaped wings
far above the trees.

How quickly my _ two
mornings in those “ fresh
woods and pastures new” passed and
when I returned to Massachusetts’ Feb-
ruary snow-bound woods I felt as if I
had taken a step backward; a step into
the past. At first I felt as if the edge
had been taken off the surprises of the
coming spring, but with the arrival within
our borders of many of my February
friends came the memory of that earlier
spring and of those new bird-friends whom
I hope soon to meet again.

American Rosin (from painting).

VI

FAMILIAR AND UNFAMILIAR BIRD
SONGS

HENEVER I hear a bird lift his
free, wild voice in pasture or wood,
I thank Heaven that there is no such
personality as a singing teacher among
birds to mechanicalize bird voices, to make
their songs more finished, and that the
Creator alone rules their hymns of praise.
Could I picture to you who have never
listened, in words that would half express
the sense of the delight, the peace, the
charm of listening in some corner of hal-
lowed Nature to simply the song of a bird,
I would willingly do so, but alas! I cannot,
and must hope that from my descriptions,
poor as they are, you will seek to hear for
yourselves the songs that have so charmed
me and which from their loveliness defy
expression and interpretation.
In “Summer Studies of Birds and
Books” by W. Warde Fowler, there is

an extremely interesting chapter “ On the

56 ON THE BIRDS’ HIGHWAY

Songs of Birds,” thoroughly worth any
one’s reading. In one place he says, and
only too truly, that bird songs cannot be
written on music paper. To quote his
very words “A poet can be translated
from his own language into another with
some show of success; but to write the
song of a robin' on a musical stave is in
my opinion not only to translate him but
to traduce him.” Then he goes on to
say: “ There is a very plain reason why
all such attempts should be futile. The
birds use no fixed intervals such as those
in our artificial scale; their voices are
wholly free and unfettered by convention,
and they can make free use of any of the
infinite number of intervals which in real-
ity exist between one of our tones and
another.” It was only a day or two ago
I saw a person with a note book with
musical staves pasted in on which the
songs of birds heard in the field were to
be written. If we wish to put in black
and white, for others’ benefit, bird voices,
we must satisfy ourselves by expressing
their songs in words, without any attempt
at musical description. In a few cases
1 English robin.

BIRD SONGS a

certain combinations of letters will convey
some idea of their notes, as for example
the pleasant call of our titmouse, “ chic-a-
dee-dee.” But we do not want to write
these songs in a book; to get the full
beauty of them we must impress them
upon our minds by hearing them often,
and then when we wish to recall them we
may, with all their environment, which is
half their charm, and no matter where we
are we can hear our favorite bird singing
his sweetest strain in some secluded spot
we love.

There are two kinds of songs of which
I would speak, familiar and unfamiliar.

February has hardly fairly retreated be-
fore we hear, each year, if we wander to
some damp thicket of catbrier, blackberry
and general underbrush, the low sweet
voice of the song sparrow echoing from its
depths, such a familiar voice and so joy-
ously welcomed. Early in March whether
the day be rainy or fair, if we chance to
pass that way again we shall hear the
song anew, sung instead from the upper-
most spray of the thicket and its tones
put new vigor into our winter-stricken
bodies, give us a new lease of life as would

58 ON THE BIRDS’ HIGHWAY

the Fountain of Youth if we could bathe
in its limpid waters; and yet the little
singer asks nothing for
his song, except the right
to sing it unmolested to
his better half and to his
Maker. As the days
grow longer we hear their
voices in chorus from
daybreak to twilight and our ears become
indurated to their song, although more
beautiful as the performers become en-
amored by the season, until we hear some
individual bird reverse or vary his lay.

As the last ray of the golden sun fades
in the sky of an April afternoon and the
dusky afterglow is at hand, we listen to
the evensong of the robins. Now from
that low fence rail, now from the top of
yonder tree comes the uncertain, often
broken strain, though plaintive, exquisite
and inspiring. It is an hour when the
spirit of quietude and contentment rests
on all and the song takes a peculiar hold
upon us. We whisper, —

«Come to me, Robin! The daylight is dying,
Come to me now;
Come, ere the cypress-tree over me sighing,

BIRD SONGS 59

Dank with the shadow-tide circles my brow ;
Come, ere oblivion speed to me, flying
Swifter than thou!”

We lean our elbows on the gate and,
with our chin between our palms, peer
through the dusk to where the last song-
ster 1s pouring forth in subdued notes
the closing vesper. We wait for another
repetition of those notes but all is still,
save the “sleigh-bells” that echo from
the marsh where the hyla sings.

We must step into Maine for a mo-
ment, although on the Birds’ Highway dur-
ing migration we hear it singing, to listen
to the chant of another
familiar bird, the white-
throated sparrow. As we
hearkened to the robins at
sundown we will listen
to the white-throats at sun-
dawn. Perched on the top
of a low spruce, bathed in
the first beams of the morning light, we
shall find this little minstrel sitting, and
hear wafted to us on the dewy morning
air his plaintive, tremulous, far-off sound-
ing ‘ Pea-pea-peabody — peabody — pea-
body.’ And with the song, although it

60 ON THE BIRDS’ HIGHWAY

is July, will come some November and
April pictures in which he was the central
figure, and to me will also be brought the
picture of a tall maple in a December
snowstorm in Massachusetts with him-
self perched in the upper branches sing-
ing his sad refrain.

Before turning to study a quaint and
curious master musician and to hear his
unfamiliar song, we see a bobolink rise in
ecstasy of joy from a bending dock, and
as his hilarious, romping, ungovernable
notes gushing out of his shaking throat
reach our ears we find ourselves in many
a meadow lounging in the delicious June
sunshine among the waving timothy and
drinking in the harmony that seems to
bubble out of some spring above us in
the ether.

How many of the sportsmen of eastern
United States who consider the woodcock
their favorite game bird and who have
bagged many a brace, know of, or have
listened to their love song. I think we
could count them on our fingers. If we
seek out a patch of low damp alder, with
open stretches of meadow grass here and
there where the woodcock loves to dwell,

BIRD SONGS 61

at the twilight hour at the close of a late
March or early April day and seclude
ourselves in some shadowy corner we
may hear a curious note, sounding to
different ears like ‘“Nyah,”’ “ Peent,”
“ Paap,’ — in fact apparently to every-
body differently. A minute
passes and we may catch
sight of an object in the
fading light spring into the
air and while rising in long
curves let fall a succession
of musical notes; then the
song changes and we realize
that the bird is descending,
the notes become more liquid and beauti-
ful until the bird sinks again into the
rass.

This flight-song is one of the most
wonderful of bird utterances and surely
we are worit to cry out to the bird as he
springs upward again,

«<'Teach me half the gladness
That thy brain must know,
Such harmonious madness
From my lips would flow,
The world should listen then, as I am listening
now?”’

62 ON THE BIRDS’ HIGHWAY

Think what voices are forever silenced
each autumn by sportsmen! ah! I feel sure
if each one of them could hear that song,
fewer woodcock would fall to the lot of
some faithful dog to retrieve. It is hardly
a matter of prophecy, when we say that
a quarter century will hear the last love
song of the woodcock. It is an interest-
ing fact that few of the early ornitholo-
gists heard it or were aware that Philohela
minor possessed such a power.

When we know of an instance of an
old Virginian having followed the singing
of a northern shrike for an hour or more,
supposing he was listening to the song
of a mocking bird, we are praising the
“butcher bird” in high terms. Never-
theless, such a thing has happened. We
are surprised to find that Minot speaks
of this bird as being “incapable of utter-
ing musical sounds” and that Mr. Park-
hurst in his “ Bird Calendar” also writes
in this wise — “ a sort of miniature vulture
in its habits and by one of the inexplicable
pyres of science classed among song
birds! . My attention was first called
to it by hearing a harsh, uncouth noise,
as unmusical as the creaking of a hinge,

BIRD SONGS 63

which it somewhat resembled, but with a
venomous touch of animosity. I never
heard anything more barbaric from the
throat of any bird, especially a ‘song
bird’; and according to all reports this
was a fair exhibition of its musical ability.”
What a sad injustice both these writers
have done the shrike. If Mr. Parkhurst
had scanned the pages of Nuttall he
would have found a glowing description
of his powers. Even the female has a
song. Here in Massachusetts in March
and early April, or even as early as Feb-
ruary, | have heard this “ bloodthirsty
villain” pour forth a beautiful, though
disconnected song that would place him
among some of our best songsters. He
generally selects the top| of some fairly
lofty tree from which to sing his melody ; :
in fact the shrike spends much of his time
scanning the landscape from a convenient
tree top. It seems strange that a bird of
such tastes should be possessed of such a
truly fine song, but even if he is a mur-
derer, why should he not love at least a
female of his own kin and try to win
her with as much grace as many another
bird?

64 ON THE BIRDS’ HIGHWAY

While we are speaking of March song-
sters let us mention one more bird that
comes to us in that windy month —the
phoebe. His familiar “ O-willy, o-will”’
has rung through too many orchards and
mingled too often
with the rippling
river to have es-
caped many ears
—but compara-
tively few persons
have seen him
later in the sea-
son fly into the
air and, while with
rapid wing-beats he climbs the sky, utter
his whole vocabulary of notes with praise-
worthy gusto. It seems necessary for
some birds to spring into the air and
force out their music with all the energy
in their little bodies, to express the joy
that fills their overflowing souls.

Often entirely unnoticed and rarely ob-
served, the brown creeper follows his
monotonous spirals about tree trunk after
tree trunk the day long, and perhaps this
is the reason that so few of us have heard
his exquisite song. Late in the spring,

BIRD SONGS 65

when the mild weather seems to have
melted the winter out of his soul, he will
sing to his accompanying mate, his wiry,
sweet though feeble song, which you
could not have believed would have issued
from that demure bird with the sickle
bill. He certainly sings as if his song
were meant for a small audience, and
surely only a small audience have ever
listened to it.

There are few roamers of the woods
who have not often heard a ringing
“* teacher - teacher - teacher - teacher’ echo
through their aisles and seen the chorister,
the oven bird, walking sedately a hori-
zontal bough. But if we remain in the
wood till sundown is close at hand, we
shall see him soar up through the trees,
pouring forth an indescribable but beauti-
ful song, until the night wraps the wood
in shadow and silence.

And, last of all, the Maryland yellow-
throat, who hides in the thicket with a
black mask over his pert face, has beside
his ventriloquous “ wichety’’ which we
know, generally long before we know
himself, a musical achievement worthy of
note. From the middle of May through-

5

66 ON THE BIRDS’ HIGHWAY

out the summer, when tired of the
thicket’s depths, he bursts its bonds and
uttering an indescribable jingle climbs
the air and then drops silently back again
into its embrace.

Such songs as these seem to call out
the good in a man and make him humble
himself even before a bird, for surely he
is without a soul who would not pause to
listen to such divine melody.

AN Osprey’s NEsT.

VII

IN THE MOUNT HOPE LANDS

O return to the place where one has

spent almost every summer of one’s
life, though the time elapsed since the last
departure has been only a few months,
brings with each visit, new pleasures and
surprises. Every landmark must be
hunted up and every change noted. It
is with the same pleasure now that I re-
visit certain spots in Bristol, Rhode Is-
land, as when on returning to our summer
cottage years ago I would ransack every
drawer and closet to find some forgotten
boyish toy of the previous season. Some-
times I wish I could live those summers
over again, because I could spend them to
better advantage, and yet those weeks from
June to October when I lived in an atmos-
phere of do-nothingness I now deeply
cherish. Bristol does not offer to outsid-
ers the attractions it does to me, — they
see only its surface, so to speak, — but

70 ON THE BIRDS’ HIGHWAY

each street of the old town and every bit
of woodland on its outskirts has its note-
book in my memory. At the station I
am greeted by familiar faces and enjoy
talking over the past severe winter (every

winter is severer than the last) with the
proprietors of the different stores or farms.
I know every one and every one knows
me, and when there I dwell in a spirit of
friendliness toward mankind in general.
My last visit was for three days, the
nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first of
April, 1895. I arrived in the eight-o’clock

IN THE MOUNT HOPE LANDS 71

train from Boston, and was driven to my
“ stopping-place,” Mrs. *s, by a re-
tired sea-captain in a rickety carryall, —
one of those delightful conveyances whose
front seat has to be tilted forward to allow
one to get in; and, no matter how well
you know it must be tilted back again for
your exit, you always endeavor to get out
beforehand. I occupied one of the back
rooms at Mrs. *s, which looked out
upon a decidedly primitive garden, whose
currant bushes were already in leaf, and
where one lone box-bush marked the
right angle of an extinct hedge. On my
left at the table sat Mrs. ’s daughter,
Scylla, and it pleased me to imagine that
the name of Mrs. , who sat on my
right, might be Charybdis..

Shortly after arriving I started down
Hope Street out of the town, past the
Herreshoff Works, which have in the
past few years made this historic little
town more famous, and joined the Ferry
road. A fishhawk, the bird emblem of
Bristol, sailed over me “ on his way a-fish-
ing” in Walker’s Cove. From the mead-
ows that stretch down to the bay the
plaintive whistle of the meadow lark

72 ON THE BIRDS’ HIGHWAY

reached my ears, and as I climbed the
stone wall and struck out across the fields,
numerous cowbirds rose from the grass
and sought a willow-shaded lane in advance
of me.

Hog Island (every bay has its Hog
Island) and Rhode Island itself lay toward
the southwest, where the great fans of
three old shingled windmills stood out
against the sky. I followed the shore to
the extreme point where Bristol Light is
situated, and the keeper bemoaned, as did
all those “‘ along shore,” the loss of some
wharf or breakwater by the ice last winter.
It is an interesting spot, Bristol Point.
The channel, only a mile wide, is thirteen
fathoms deep and the tide rushes in and
out with great force. Coming from the
Atlantic, sixteen miles away, and striving
to reach Mount Hope Bay through this
narrow gut, makes it one of the places
dangerous to navigation in Narragansett
Bay.

Gn the eastern side of the point, stretch-
ing back from a wall of low cliffs, is a
patch of woods known as the “ Junipers.”
This is now used as a cow pasture, and

when rambling through the labyrinth of

IN THE MOUNT HOPE LANDS 73

paths among the bay bushes one often
meets a line of cows approaching in single
file face to face. If their leader happens
to be considerate of a wayfarer and breaks
through the bushes to one side, well and
good ; but if they hold their ground, one
must retreat to the first offshoot from the
path or scramble out of the way into a
tangle of brier and bush, a far from pleas-
ant proceeding. Here crows are plentiful,
and a “cotton-tail”’ disappearing in the
underbrush is of common occurrence, but
seldom isit morethanatail. The
“ Junipers” were more quiet than
usual on those three days; the
brown thrashers and cat-birds had
not arrived, and cows and crows
held undisputed sway. To fol-
low the path along the cliff’s edge
meant seeing a kingfisher or two,
while far out over the water a few
gulls and fish-hawks sailed to and
fro. At the northern end of the
“ Junipers”” one emerges sharply
into the pastures of an old Rhode Island
farm, and the crossing of the stone wall
that bounds the woods seems like stepping
out of darkness into light. A flock of

74 ON THE BIRDS’ HIGHWAY

sheep browsed on the hillside, and a few
white-bellied swallows circled over the
farm buildings. From here to Mount
Hope stretches lot after lot of farming
land, dotted here and there with a house
or barn.

In a few acres of bottom land I found a
pair of vesper sparrows, and “‘ red-wingers ”
as the farmers’ boys call them, ‘‘ quonk-a-
reed” from every bush-top. Here in
September and October fringed gentian is
abundant, and in June blue flag and blue-
eyed grass grow in profusion.

The osprey’s nest is a decided character-
istic of the Mount Hope lands, every
farm having a pair of the birds either nest-
ing in some decayed tree or on a pole on
which the farmer has placed an old cart-
wheel for their convenience. The ospreys
return year after year in the first week in
April and leave for the South when the
gulls return.

It was not until the day after I arrived
that I walked to Mount Hope and sought
out King Philip’s spring. Once having
found the spring and seated myself near
by, my thoughts pass back two hundred
years and every stump becomes an Indian

IN THE MOUNT HOPE LANDS 75

and the crackling of an approaching cow
in the underbrush fills me tor the moment
with strange awe. Who can blame Philip
for loving dearly that fair Rhode Island
country? When there amid its loveliness
I always feel deeply for him and his noble
tribe who died in its defence.

On the further side of the mount is the
Norseman’s Rock, whose face bears, at
least to me, an unreadable inscription.
The view from the summit of the mount
is fair, not bold; but my eyes never rested
on one more lovely.* It is “a matchless
panorama of verdant fields, of waving for-
ests and of sparkling waters.” The rock
that marks the highest point is only two
hundred feet above the bay. A mountain
climber would sneer at it; but it was
named Montaup, and is to-day Mount
Hope; so let it remain.

From two willows, near a pond on the
side of an old road, on the morning of the
twentieth, two goldfinches were singing ;
one was clad almost in summer garb, while
the other had not lost his winter coat. Cow-
birds were here in numbers, and a flicker
had taken possession of a hole under the
eaves of a summer cottage. The only

76 ON THE BIRDS’ HIGHWAY

chipping sparrow that I sang every
morning in Mrs. s garden, and a
song sparrow had taken up his dwelling
there also. In the woodlands I heard the
peculiar song of the yellow-rumped war-
blers, and at various times during my stay
chickadees were noted. Once when stroll-
ing through the DeWolf woods I caught
sight of a chickadee disappearing into a
hole in a decayed birch. I approached
quietly and clapped my hand over the en-
trance, thinking I had imprisoned him,
when from above my head sounded a
saucy “ chic-a-dee,” which I translated,
“You haven’t got me,” — but when and
how he got there I do not yet know.

At half after six o’clock on the morning
of the twentieth I walked down the street
where my hostess lived to the shore, and
sat on a boulder looking out over the
placid bay toward Pappoose-squaw, the
sister point to Bristol, when a flock of
nine wild geese passed over, flying east;
they were so low that even the sound of
their wings was audible. How calm and
soothing the mild southwest breeze was ;
no such zephyr ever finds its way to the
“north shore.”

IN THE MOUNT HOPE LANDS 77

Late Friday afternoon I was driven to
the station by the same retired sea-captain,
and, as Mr. Bolles aptly described travel-
ling by train in Cape Breton, as I sped
toward Providence “ names became places
and then faded back to names again”
until the setting of the sun beyond Green-
wich shut out the passing panorama.

VIII

UNDER THE SHADOW OF WACHUSETT

NDER the shadow of Wachusett
Mountain, on the west, lies the little
township of Hubbardston, Massachu-
setts, with its rolling hills and chain of
stumpy picturesque ponds. The shad-
bush’s fruit was falling and the mountain
laurel’s glory had passed when I visited
in mid-July one of the farms on the old
Westminster Road. Worcester County is
ornithologically one of the most interest-
ing spots in Massachusetts, and I looked
forward to seeing and meeting many in-
teresting bird acquaintances during my
short stay. I had against me, of course,
the season, — well advanced summer.
About the farm proper perhaps the
chimney swift was the most common bird,
and barn and tree swallows sat in long
rows on the telephone wire or circled
about the buildings. A pair of robins
had their nest on a piazza-post near where

“LLASQHOV AA LNAOL

UNDER SHADOW OF WACHUSETT 81

a phoebe lived last year and another
female I found brooding on a nest in an
eye-beam under a wood shed. A few
-song and Savannah sparrows sang in the
adjoining meadow where a flock of sheep
browsed, and a chipping sparrow’s nest
was in the Virginia creeper on the piazza
railing. A least flycatcher guarded the
driveway trees.
I had seen one
lone cliff swal-
low near the
farm, and so
during a long
drive on the
lovely undulat-
ing woodland
roads. that
every now and
then bring one
suddenly out upon a deserted or tumble-
down farmhouse with its overshadowing
barn, I kept a look-out for their nests
under the eaves. Only one nest with a
brooding bird rewarded me, although I
passed a dozen or more such unpainted,
windowless, typical New England struc-
tures.

6

82 ON THE BIRDS’ HIGHWAY

As we rumbled along, from the cool
pine woods, black-throated green warblers
could be heard above the noise of the wheels
and squeaking whiffle-tree. A black-billed
cuckoo crossed the road ahead of us into
a patch of birches. By a rocky bare hill-
top a bob-white was calling. Kingbirds
quarrelled as they tumbled overhead on
wing. A phcebe sat motionless on the
ridge pole of a roadside shed. Bobolinks
rose singing from an unmowed hay field.
Goldfinches swung down the road _ before
us and vesper sparrows dropped over the
walls into the meadows. Red-eyed vireos
sang on every hand. We stopped at an
old unshingled house and I got down for
a stroll. Behind the orchard a pond,
which through the kindness of Uncle Sam
had been stocked with German carp, lay
among birches and pines. The big fish
came to the surface to be fed with bread
from the hand. About the pond circled
three night hawks; a Maryland yellow-
throat was singing down the brook, and
out of a thicket where meadowsweet and
fire-weed grew a catbird poured his solil-
oquy. Of sudden the plaintive song of
a white-throated sparrow drifted down

UNDER SHADOW OF WACHUSETT 83

from a pine hill. This species as a breed-
ing bird is one of Worcester County’s
eccentricities. That single song was the
spice of my entire ornithological trip. An
American bittern with slow and stealthy
stride was threading his way across a bit
of low meadow just over the wall along
the old Princeton-Gardner road. His
yellow legs were sharply defined against
the dark, dank grass.

As the sun was setting and tingeing the
lily-padded waters
of the Meadow-
brook pond with
its blush, I wan-
dered down the
road and put out
upon its placid
waters in an old
flat boat. The

ond is the most
southerly of the
chain of six, al-
most encircled by
a high fringe of
mixed growths ;
at one corner two wide fields stretch away
tothe farm. As I drifted out from among

84 ON THE BIRDS’ HIGHWAY

the yellow spatter-docks into the frag-
rance of the true pond-lilies at the far end
of the pond, two night herons sailed out
of the fading light. I paddled within a
few yards of one perched on an old dead
cedar stub. A veery rolled out his music
from near where I embarked. Darkness
began to obliterate the shore, and to frog
music I left the shadowy pond. The
moon that rose from behind Wachusett
later stretched its long finger of yellow
light across the water when the night was
far advanced, making the lingering shad-
ows more intense.

Far up the valley where Monadnock
loomed above the lower hills I drove next
morning, passed the other ponds, one
particularly picturesque with its old water
wheel and dam. I was to visit a myste-
rious cave, which, tradition has it, smug-
glers inhabited. Where a turn is made
into the less frequented lane that leads to
the cave a giant chestnut stands, fully two
hundred and fifty years old and fourteen
feet in circumference four feet above the
ground. High up a precipitous slope
which the top of the great pines hardly
reach, the entrance of the cave runs down

UNDER SHADOW OF WACHUSETT 85

into solid rock. I backed down with a
lantern between its dripping walls. My
voice echoed strangely. The bottom of
the cave was covered with water a foot
deep. As the lantern would not pene-
trate the gloom I crawled back into day-
light. I am not envious of cave-dwelling
animals. A wood thrush sang in the
distance and companies of black-throated
green warblers piped their wheezy songs
above in the giant pines.

The pond with its changing cloud
effects and luxuriant foliage was the most
enticing spot, and I sauntered along a
winding path, over brook and between
fruit-laden shad bushes, a-birding. A
family of black and white creepers were in
evidence and called incessantly ; a female
redstart darted about, an oven bird anda
scarlet tanager made music, while a chest-
nut-sided or a Nashville warbler would
now and then join in the chorus. Two
marsh hawks chased each other in the
sultry sky. A flicker shouted in the dis-
tance and a crow cast his flapping shadow
on the mirrored surface of the pond.
Far up on the hillside a blue jay cried.
On the waving birches a gaudy redwing

86 ON THE BIRDS’ HIGHWAY

occasionally swung with the southerly
wind. The fragrance of the sweet fern
laded the summer air. Where an old
log spanned a rushing brook, a shy chick-
adee peered and with a dreamy note
seemed to silence all but a croaking bull
frog. The spell remained un-
broken until a purple finch
warbled softly, up near an old
cemetery, and a field sparrow
sang. When one songstet' pipes
up after one of those silent mo-
ments when all Nature seems
dozing at midday, it is the signal for
other voices. The field sparrow’s trill
had hardly died away before a chewink
twanged his instrument and ran his scale,
two passing cedar birds whined and a
brown thrasher chucked.

Pushing out among the lilies and stumps
in the flat-boat, a spotted sandpiper took
a loop down the shore and a green heron
“ bucked” nasally as he flew low following
the bank around the pond. At the south
end of Meadow-brook Pond a small for-
est of dead trees protrudes above the
water from one to fifteen feet high, and
from one of the lowest of these a king-

UNDER SHADOW OF WACHUSETT 87

bird flew while his mate scolded and hov-
ered above the boat. Paddling up, I was
taken aback to find in the crotch of the
stub, but a foot above water,
their nest and in it three
blotched eggs. As I left
them to their lighthouse
home I wished them well,
but if they had left the land
for safety I had misgivings
whether their offspring would
ever reach terra firma, for
their first flight would have
to be over fifty yards. A wild venture
for a young king. A kingfisher seemed
to agree with me as he flew over.

On the morning of July nineteenth I
started on a seven-mile drive to the
summit of Wachusett. The sky was
overhung with dark rain-clouds as the
horse trotted over the pond bridges leav-.
ing the farm. The roadside was gay
with summer flowers; fire-weed, wood
lilies, meadowsweet and _ steeple-bush
caught the eye. Swallows circled about
the old farms, cedar birds whined in the
orchards and indigo birds sang incessantly
from the young birches. Many vesper

88 ON THE BIRDS’ HIGHWAY

sparrows ran along the walls or sprang
from under the horse’s feet. “Two wood-
pewees inhabited a piece of burnt ground
by the roadside and a mourning dove,
a little farther on, lit for an instant in
a dead apple-tree as I passed. The last
hill was finally reached before taking the
mountain road. Off in the valley lay
between wooded shores Lake Wachusett,
leaden under the gray clouds. Rounding
a sharp turn in the road I began to ascend
the mountain’s timbered sides. Wild
raspberry was in bloom all along the
zigzag path. Robins flew out over the
valley. A scarlet tanager and a red-eye
were singing near timber line as, turning
the last curve, the summit and the moun-
tain house were reached. Two towhees
sang continually during my entire stay on
the bare rocky crest, and a junco, a breed-
ing bird on Wachusett’s summit, 2,480
feet above sea-level, sang his simple trill.
A rift in the clouds transformed the
nearer misty hills, lakes and ponds, but
even Monadnock could not be seen on
account of the heavy clouds which shut
in and hung below the mountain around
its base.

A Meapow CLEARING

IX

A MEADOW CHRONICLE

LING-pling-pling-tweet-tweet-tweet

-de-eei”’ poured from the topmost
twig of an old apple-tree. The singer was
a song sparrow, and he repeated his modest
strain a number of times, and then, as if
dissatisfied, almost exactly reversed it and
sang, “ Tweet-tweet-tweet-pling-pling-de-
eel,” with more emphasis than before, and
suddenly dropped into the long grass be-
low, out of which he once again sang
softly, then silence reigned.

It was a typical July morning, quiet,
still and peaceful. No sound was to be
heard except the “‘zizzing” of the insects
and the subdued song of the birds. There
were two busy families astir, however, for
from one of the neighboring apple-trees a
pair of kingbirds had just safely guided
four restless babies out into the wide, wide
world, and an equally industrious pair of
chipping sparrows had done the same.

g2 ON THE BIRDS’ HIGHWAY

The four young kingbirds were sitting
side by side on the upper rail of a fence,
while one of their parents —I could not
tell whether father or mother — hovered
over the neighboring meadow in search of
some insect to fill their gaping yellow
throats, now poising over the yellow
patches of St. John’s-wort, now flying
with rapid wing-beats to the foot of the
meadow, and disappearing among the
stems of some “ cat-o’-nine-tails”’ that had
sprung up in the cellar of what was once
an exceedingly small cottage or else a
fisherman’s hut. Perhaps you will think
it a queer place for “nine-tails,” but the
bottom of the meadow was very spongy
from some underground spring. In a
moment the parent arose and flew to the
fence, greeted by the chattering cries of
the youngsters. In the end of its beak,
which was opened to its widest extent,
was held the orange-red fruit of the night-
shade. To its poisonous qualities, if it
has any, was not paid the slightest heed ;
but, alighting on the fence, the old bird
commenced beating it to pieces, and de-
livered it in portions to the crowding,
chattering young, who, without the slight-

A MEADOW CHRONICLE 93

est apprehension, swallowed eagerly each
one his share.

Knowing neither their names nor sex, I
numbered them No. 1, 2, 3, and 4, al-
though after each scrabble for food I was
never quite sure that they regained the
same order. The male or female, which-
ever it might be, after the nightshade
course of their breakfast, sought again the
meadow, and after a wild chase managed
to capture a small moth which went to
No. 2. After this the parent disappeared
toward the other end of the orchard, and
the youngsters settled down to take a
short nap, with one eye open, no
doubt, for danger, and looking
like four grayish puff balls. As
the old kingbird did not again
appear I turned my attention to
the chippies.

These babies, also four in num-
ber, gave their loving parents even
more trouble than did the young
kings, for one never stayed in the
same tree for five minutes, and
one or more often followed the male or
female about (both parents were pres-

ent) begging for food. The brood kept

94 ON THE BIRDS’ HIGHWAY

up a continual “chippering,”’ and by the
amount of food given to each, their capac-
ity must be enormous compared with their
size. It was interesting to watch the par-
ent seek the tree where one had been a
moment before and see how anxiously she
peered around uttering a sharp “ chip,”
and then when the young rascal answered
from the next tree, how quickly the old
bird would dart off to give to the mite,
who stood with quivering wings and open
mouth to receive the wriggling grub. I
could tell instantly the young chippies
from the old birds, as their breasts were
streaked with dusky brown.

A pair of goldfinches undulated over
the meadow and stopped for a moment at
the right angle of the wall among the
rusty stalks of a clump of dock and the
delicate flower heads of the yellow loose-
strife. Yellow predominates in the mead-
ow now, St. John’s-wort, loosestrife, tansy,
butter- anit eggs and nnallets being the prin-
cipal colorists.

In crossing the meadow a few days ago,
the old chippies arose from the grass and
proclaimed the whereabouts of a youngster
by anxious manner and loud “chips.” I

A MEADOW CHRONICLE 95

hunted about the spot whence they had
started, and in a moment found one of
their babies, who, when I picked him up,
never uttered a word, or rather note, but
sat in my hand and complacently stared
at me. Hewas a very uninteresting little
fellow, without a word for himself, and
entirely devoid of good looks. As his
parents seemed so worried for his safety,
I, after much difficulty, sat him on the
lowest limb of a young elm, and left him
crouched down, his toes buried in his
breast feathers, and gazing vaguely up
into the blue sky above.

A pair of Baltimore orioles had also all
they could well attend to in a family of
six young ones. Baltimore children are
the worst cry-babies I know of; all day
long they kept up a continual squawking
for food. The untiring efforts of their
parents seemed to be of no avail, the more
they received the more they wanted, and |
must say I was glad when one morning
they had vanished from the neighborhood.

The tall grass in the meadow I had
almost decided was not to be cut, but
early one morning a mowing machine ar-
rived, and the whoie field was turned to

96 ON THE BIRDS’ HIGHWAY

desolation before its clattering knives.
My yellow loosestrife, tansy, St. John’s-
wort, and steeple-bush fell with the rest,
and the kingbird family seemed to miss
its waving surface as much as I did. No
more could they hover over it, catching
an unlucky grasshopper or moth, but had
to alight among the stubble to scare them
up, when a wild chase ensued. No more
could tiger swallow-tail or the little cab-
bage butterflies float over its fragrant
grasses. The beauty of my meadow gone,
my three families having almost deserted
it, I turned my attention to other quarters,
but the sweet voice of the little song spar-
row was still to be heard pouring out his
soul from the old apple-tree’s crest.

‘GNOqd MOTTIVYMS

x

SWALLOW POND

VERY lover of Nature has a certain
spot to which he always wanders
when a few hours, or even minutes, are
granted him to pursue his studies of bird
or flower. The few acres of country to
which I have paid innumerable visits at
all seasons of the year and under all con-
ditions of weather, I know as the Swallow
Pond region, and I feel to-day as if it
almost belonged to me.

This bit of country, where Nature still
holds sway, is composed of the wilder por-
tions of three estates, and though diminu-
tive in the extrerie, it yet offers to the
birds all the attractions of marsh, thicket,
upland, orchard, and wood. In the east-
ern corner lies the pond itself, only some
hundred feet in diameter, resembling an
enormous bulb, its greater roots extending
toward the west, in the form of two small
and sluggish brooks. The very eastern

100 ON THE BIRDS’ HIGHWAY

boundary is marked by a line of white
willows, while on its southern side is a
“stumpy ”’ cow pasture. Tall oaks, whose
naked branches trace myriads of veins
against the cold winter sunset, command
the western and northern limits.

To the oaks and thickets in the win-
ter comes the bold, northern shrike, and
small troops of chickadees, downy wood-
peckers, creepers and nuthatches, ransack
the seven apple-trees I call my orchard.
In marshes of this rus in urbe I find the
first skunk cabbages, and in its meadows
the first dandelions, buttercups, and daisies
appear. The white willows, even in March,
begin to show signs of life, and the red
maples on the pond’s bank turn fuzzy
and misty at the death of winter.

Many an hour have I spent, sitting on
the trunk of a fallen maple and watch-
ing the sojourning fox sparrows as they
scratched among the underbrush, and
listened to their glad song, which is the
sweetest of the season. Here also from
the swaying branches of a patch of alders
the red-wings shout their “ quonk-a-ree.”
Each spring a pair of kingfishers arrive in

April at the pond, though what they find

SWALLOW POND IOI

beyond a few horned pout (an uncom-
monly uninviting morsel) is more than I
can see. They always disappear by the
last week in May. Along the brook’s
side I am sure to find juncos and gold-
finches, while flickers, crows, and blue
jays are omnipresent the year round. In
the last week in April, Savannah, vesper,
field, and chipping sparrows arrive, and
the sweet voice of the white-throated spar-
row is to be continually heard through
the spring. This year, for the first time,
a pair of crows built in one
of the white pines on the
pond’s edge, within one hun-
dred feet of a great thorough-
fare, a very exposed situation
for Corvus to choose for his
home. The chimney swifts
inhabit the flues of a neigh-
boring house, and can be seen
darting in and out all sum-
mer. Barn and white-bellied
swallows are also among the first spring
arrivals, and circle over the fields and
pond, often touching the latter’s placid
surface with their wing-tips.

One morning last May, when the night

102 ON THE BIRDS’ HIGHWAY

before only a few scattered warblers were
to be found, the whole migrating hosts of
Mniotiltidae seemed to have arrived dur-
ing the night; a single tree contained five
different species. Following them from
tree to bush they kept leading me from
one spot to another until I became fairly
bewildered by their overpowering num-
bers. Such days are never to be for-
gotten; the pleasure and excitement of
that early morning ramble will linger long
in my memory. If the birds would come
only a species at a time as in March and
even April, one could spend much more
time with each individually, but when
May has once set in and the main wave
of migration has commenced, then every
woodland, meadow and orchard is swarm-
ing with so many varieties that one is
fairly overwhelmed.

In summer, night herons sit motion-
less on the dead limbs overhanging
the water, and the kingfisher wakes the
echoes with his loud rattle, and the
lively solitary or spotted sandpiper paces
the mud spots on the shore. The breezes
carry the green carpet of duck-weed to
the opposite banks of the pond, and nu-

SWALLOW POND 103

merous turtles sun themselves from every
log.

In the meadows near by, the flower
heads of the St. John’s-wort become rusty.
Butter-and-eggs are
tall green steeples, with
but a few flowers to
grace their tops. Blue
vervain is in bloom,
and goldenrod pro-
claims the advent of
autumn. <A _ family
of white-bellied nut-
hatches inhabited the
region one summer.

The resident flickers
are driven from their
apple- -trees by com-
panies of boys. Fam-
ilies of phaebes also survey the country
from the dead limbs; they do not have
to go far for insects in August. The deli-
cate flowers of the touch-me-not waver
in the gentle breeze, and mullein, self-heal
and shepherd’ s purse are in abundance,

Summer gives a sombreness to Nature
about the pond. The cries of the night
heron at sundown add to the uncanny

104 ON THE BIRDS’ HIGHWAY

solitude. The outlines of the trees are
lost as twilight falls, the wild noises of the
night replace the singing of the insects,
and the pond is bathed in the pale light
of a midsummer’s moon.

So on through the season this little
spot of unspoiled country undergoes the
changes of Nature. Winter with its
snows, chickadees and shrikes; spring
with its flowers, returning birds and bud-
ding trees; summer with its changing
flora and warm still days, and autumn
with its painted trees, goldenrod and de-
parting birds. This place would have
long ago been made public by having a
street run through it, but on account of
the impossibility of filling up the pond,
as all the earth thrown in rapidly disap-
pears, the scheme was abandoned. Let
us hope the pond will retain its “ unfill-
able” qualities, to coin a word, so that
for many years to come it will remain
“ unimproved.”

“HONOUOISATST

XI
IN THE LAND OF NORUMBEGA

This is the forest primeval. The mumnuring pines and
the hemlocks,

Bearded with moss, and in garments green, indistinct in
the twilight,

Stand like Druids of eld, with voices sad and prophetic,

Stand like harpers hoar, with beards that rest on their
bosoms.

Loud from its rocky caverns, the deep-voiced neighbor-
ing ocean

Speaks, and in accents disconsolate answers the wail of
the forest.

LOoNGFELLOW.

N the south end of Islesborough, an

island in the region called by tradi-
tion Norumbega, there lie about four
hundred and fifty acres of woods. This
tract is known as Pentagoét, the Indian
name for Penobscot, and in the bay bear-
ing this name Islesborough is situated.
The view from the highest point, which
is about one hundred feet above the sea,
is very picturesque ; spruce-covered islands
with their serrated edges dot the bay, mak-

108 ON THE BIRDS’ HIGHWAY

ing it a characteristic scene of the Maine
coast.

Far to the west the Camden Hills,
Megunticook the highest, rising thirteen
hundred and fifty feet above the level of
the sea, form a mountainous background
for the town of Camden itself that nestles
down on the shore at their base. To
the south lie the islands North Haven
and Vinal Haven — the two together are
called the Fox Islands; and many others
too numerous to name divide the bay into
many smaller bays and’ channels. This
view is said to resemble strongly the Eng-
lish Lakes. The rugged gray slate-stone
shores, the yellow tinge of the sea-weed
at low tide, above them the dark green
foliage of the spruces and now and then
the lighter shades of a tall beech, with an
occasional glimpse of a red-brown meadow,
make the islands themselves beautiful.

Among the firs on the west side of the
point facing the water is an interesting
grave-yard of the early settlers. The
dates on the headstones, which are either
native slate or marble, go back as far as
the year 1781, showing approximately
how long ago the island was inhabited.

IN THE LAND OF NORUMBEGA_ 109

The larger birds first attract one’s at-
tention, and the most numerous of these
in summer are the gulls, crows and fish-
hawks. The gulls as well as the fish-
hawks breed in large numbers on the
island, and the cry of the osprey as he
dicles over the water for his prey is a
familiar sound. A pair of chimney swifts
evidently dwelt in the chimney of the
house in which I was staying, as the
were continually circling the sky with the
barn swallows.

Juncos could be seen frequently ; their
plumage seemed duller since last I saw
them as they passed through Massa-
chusetts in the early spring on their way
north. Chipping, song and white-throated
sparrows inhabited the island,
and I was surprised to see only
three robins during my visit.
On, Saturday afternoon, August
4th, 1894, | wandered down the
hill to the lowlands towards
Pendleton’s Point. Clumps of
waving ferns grew around the
rocks and boulders that were
scattered through the rough fields, and
red-thistles bristled from the grass. A

IIO ON THE BIRDS’ HIGHWAY

sparrow-hawk flew off over the woods as
I approached, and a fox sparrow took
refuge in the depths of a dark spruce.
The air was laden with the delicious odor
of the balsam firs, sweet fern and wild
roses; deep maroon cones hung on the
branches of the spruce in striking con-
trast to the green limbs.

A field sparrow sang from some distant
tree anda pair of kingbirds scolded as I
drew near their domain. Two chickadees,
a black poll warbler and a peabody bird
hovered among the firs, not showing the
slightest fear at my inspecting them so
closely. Many half-dead trees were draped
in long festoons of silvery moss. From
the shores came the notes of spotted and
least sandpipers, and from the woods the
“flick, flick, flick” of a golden-winged
woodpecker. Large flame-colored toad-
stools and fungi grew among the pine
needles on the ground, and I could hear
all day the tinkling of cow-bells from the
fields behind the woods, like the sounds
of the bells from the catele grazing on the
Swiss mountain sides. Two red-eyed vireos
and a redstart fluttered through the birches
and alders ina small patch of swampy land.

IN THE LAND OF NORUMBEGA III

In the winter of 1893 a snowy owl was
shot on this land, and eagles are also
occasionally to be seen during the year.
In the early morning, between sunrise and
six, the sweet song of the white-throated
sparrow could be heard; he is one of the
finest songsters in the Maine woods, and
as he stands on the top of a waving spruce
and pours forth his song, who would not
listen? This little minstrel often bears
the proud title of “song thrush” here in
his island home.

The backs of crabs and = >
sea urchins I found in great a
numbers along the shores ;
the coloring of the latter
was exquisite. Great blue
and night heron could be
seen standing at low tide in
the water in search of the
small fish that abound in
the shallow inlets. I heard
the soft whistle of a yellow-
leg as he flew over the bay
on the morning of August
sth, and the chattering of red squirrels
broke the silence. The note of a golden-
crowned kinglet came from the woods as

112 ON THE BIRDS’ HIGHWAY

I drove down the island on the same
morning. Soft white fleecy clouds drift-
ing slowly across the sky made changing
shadows on the Camden Hills and the
dark forests of the many islands. Between
North Haven and Mark Island you could
catch a glimpse of the ocean, where num-
bers of coasting schooners pass on their
way to and from the Grand Banks ; some
were near enough for one to distinguish
their sails, while others were hull down in
the distance.

The roadsides were already gilded with
goldenrod, the first tear of summer, and
wild raspberries grew in the fields and
along the fences. On the southern side
of the point I discovered a yellow-rump,
black poll and pine warbler, as they were
feeding in some ground juniper. The
plumage of the yellow-rump was very
brilliant, —so much so that he suggested
an Audubon warbler. Bunch berries grew
in thick patches in the fields and butter-
and-eggs were also abundant. Numbers
of seal could be seen at low tide on the
exposed ledges. Their heads are very
much like a dog’s and their eyes have a
soft, sad, indescribable expression. Whis-

IN THE LAND OF NORUMBEGA I13

tle-wing ducks, known generally as “ whis-
tlers,”’ were common in the bay, and a tern
or two were about.

On the afternoon of Thursday, the gth,
as I sat on the upper deck of the little
steamer Catherine, which threaded her way
among the islands as she
steamed toward Rockland, I re
looked back at Pentagoét as ‘
it lay under the heavy rain aoa &
clouds of a northeast storm. a;
It had been raining since the Ee
evening previous and the aS ae
dark clouds had just begun
to lighten, when, through a rift, the sun
shot down, turning the Island, which a few
minutes before had been gray and forbid-
ding, into a glory of light and warmth,
while the Camden Hills and the other
neighboring islands remained the same,
leaden and dull. In a few minutes we
rounded the breakwater outside of Rock-
land Harbor, and Islesborough had passed

from view.

XII

SUMMER BIRDS

SENSE of stillness and peacefulness

has stolen over the outdoor world,
the foliage has attained its full luxurious-
ness, the lighter greens of the spring have
turned darker and the summer sun shines
down unmercifully upon man and bird.

We confine our rambles to the deep
woods or along the beaches where we are
fanned by ocean breezes. It is the season
of recuperation for the birds after their
housekeeping hardships and in view of
their long migration journey, to begin be-
fore we are aware of it.

We rarely hear the wild wood ring with
bird voices as we did a month or two ago,
and if we do not tramp, tramp, tramp, —
which beneath an August sun we never
feel the least like doing, — our list of sum-
mer birds remains small; we must seek
them in the shady nooks and corners if
we wish to keep up old friendships.

‘ONINAdQ HOTIG W

SUMMER BIRDS 117

A wandering family may, however, visit
the garden or orchard occasionally and
give us a morning’s pleasure in making
their acquaintance, or an owl may take up
his abode in our clump of pines for a fort-
night and at sunset silhouette himself
against the soft pink afterglow and whin-
nie mournfully at intervals till our blood
stands still in our veins.

We may amuse ourselves, perhaps, by
calling a bob-white and her covey within
sight of the piazza or draw a company of
screaming jays over your head with a
“birch call.” The dragonflies about the
ponds, the butterflies in the meadows, the
housing of the bees at twilight, the meet-
ing of caterpillars on the footpath fill in
the moments between the few birds we see
on a ramble.

We broaden our studies more, we be-
come botanists, entomologists, geologists,
as well as ornithologists for the time being ;
we look into minor matters that during the
migration and nesting season we had no
time for. A longer pause is made to
watch a soaring hawk or to examine a
grasshopper’s locomotive machinery.

In the latter part of July the bobolinks

118 ON THE BIRDS’ HIGHWAY

cease to. sing in the pasture lands and
begin their roaming life. We may now
and then find a stray loon or coot swim-
ming -on the mirrored bay, cripple birds,
unable to migrate with their
comrades in the spring. A
flock of herring gulls often
remain the year round in
_ our waters dotting the rocks
and sand-bars with their
gray and silvery forms.
Summer days pass quickly by ; we may
have chanced to meet some birds when
berrying, but our summer friends are old
friends ; we have a pleasant chat with each
and wander on till the goldenrod whispers
its same sad story of every year and the
swallows that are flocking by thousands
warn us that the great fall journey south-
ward of the avian host has already com-
menced, and as the sun sinks in the last
summer's sky we feel the cool September
breeze sweep over the ripened fields.

<«« Summer, sister, seraph,
Let us go with thee !
In the name of the bee,
And of the butterfly,
And of the breeze, amen ! ”

“OILNVILY FHL

XIII

ALONG THE BEACH

T was early on the morning of July

twenty-first, 1897, that I climbed with
a friend into a two-seated wagon, bag and
baggage, under the very eye of West
Chop Light and started out on one of
Martha’s Vineyards old shell roads for the
Katama Plains.

Our intention was a tramp im guesitu
avium around this great Massachusetts
island, along the south or ocean beach
from Katama to Gay Head, then back by
the Vineyard Sound shore. It drizzled
now and then as we set out, but the sun
overpowered the gray clouds later and
glistened on the shining foliage of the
scrub oaks that compose the principal
sylva of this island.

The avi-fauna of Martha’s Vineyard is
peculiar ; few species, hundreds of individ-
uals. Chewinks are omnipresent, and
their song is the most continuous sound

122 ON THE BIRDS’ HIGHWAY

we heard. It echoes from the roadsides,
from the woodland, from hill-top and
valley. The brown thrasher seems to
hold an equal share of the island’s terri-
tory, — perhaps I can say terra firma, —
while the pine and prairie warblers digide
the tree-tops among themselves. I do
not mean to say that
these four birds just
named are alone on
the uplands of the
island. The black-
throated green war-
blers, chickadees,
Maryland yellow-
throats, field spar-
rows, red-eyed vireos
and vesper sparrows sang to us during our
long drive, and blue jays, wood pewees,
dainty Hnreiers, swifts and song sparrows
and the sociable chipping sparrows inhab-
ited the immediate vicinity of the West
Chop Light.

Our driver, an enormous man, who re-
galed us with reminiscences of his child-
hood, lived in the country through which
our panting horse was slowly taking us.
There was the school-house, to reach

ALONG THE BEACH 123

which he had toddled over a mile or
more of lonesome road twice a day at the
age of five. On the left was the farm of
his nearest neighbor. “Dun know who
lives there now,” he drawled, — as if he
were a century instead of thirty-four years
old. After we had worn out the landscape
and tales of his childhood, and the conver-
sation was running low, I ventured to ask
the weight of our charioteer, who so com-
pletely filled the front seat of the wagon
as he sat half turned about with one eye
to the horse and one to us. One draws
near the heart of man when he leads him
to speak of his own human power, and his
face lit up as he said, “ Wal, guess how
much I do weigh.” ‘Two hundred and
seven,” I said, after taking him in from head
to foot. “ One hundred and ninety” was
my companion’s guess. “ Two hundred
and sixty-five, and all muscle,” was his
proud reply. “And I have not found a
man in five years who can pinch my leg.”

If a marsh hawk had not sprung from
a dead stub and sailed away, I do not
believe we would have ever begun our
tramp.

After rumbling through the fields of the

124 ON THE BIRDS’ HIGHWAY

few Katama farms, taking down and put-
ting up fence bars at frequent intervals, we
reached the shore of Herring Pond. There
we unlimbered our truck, and, saying fare-
well to our driver and the freshly mown
fields of hay, teaming with grackles and
red-wing blackbirds we crossed a salt
marsh to the beach dunes, which lay be-
tween the chain of brackish ponds that
back the beach and the ocean.
Two night heron and a kingfisher
sprang from the pond’s edge as we started
along the sandy beach.
on We could not see the
e surf that broke with
a dull roar just over
the beachgrass-covered
dunes, but now and
» then acut in the sand-
hills would give a
glimpse of the wide-stretching waters of
the Atlantic with a coasting schooner or
two far out on its waters. How very
small and insignificant one feels standing
before such a waste of waters, symbolic of
such unbounded power! Yonder wreck
raises but a few gaunt ribs to speak of a
vain battle against the waves.

ALONG THE BEACH 125

*¢ The middle sea contains no crimson dulse,
Its deeper waves cast up no pearls to view ;
Along the shore my hand is on its pulse,
And I converse with many a shipwrecked crew.’’
THorEAv.

A single herring gull would sweep by
over our heads out to sea or a few roseate
or Wilson’s terns would keep us company
down the beach with slow wing-beats.

Spotted sandpipers were continually
flushed at a few hundred yards apart all
the way to Gay Head. Crows would blow
up from behind the dunes where they had
been feeding on the bounty of the ocean
and sail off over the great surface of the
inland waters. As we drew near the end of
Herring Pond and entered a stretch of salt
marsh a kingbird hovered over the waving
grass and barn swallows caught many a
gnat as they whirled against or glided
down the wind. A song sparrow too sang
from the remnant of an old fence.

Job’s Neck Pond was link two in the
chain and a few least terns that seemed to
depend upon it for their food at once gave
it notoriety in the notebook. Two little
fluffy piping plover led us up the narrow
beach; one at last sought refuge, when

126 ON THE BIRDS’ HIGHWAY

tired out, by squatting in the sand. “A
fine example of protective coloration,” I
thought, as I tried to separate it from the
pebbles and sand. Its brother or sister,
whichever it was, a wonder at running,

Ee he,
scampered off over the dunes, doubling on
our trail. We soon reached the usual bit
of marsh separating each pond, and here
I jotted down two laughing gulls that
flapped over on the geological map we
carried.

From among the tall salt grass on the
edge of Faqua, the next pond, we started
asharp-tailed sparrow. Each pond seemed
to be marked by some interesting bird,

ALONG THE BEACH 127

for in the little cove in the southern cor-
ner of Oyster Pond stood a winter yellow-
leg almost up to his feathers in water.

This autumnal expectation and chance
of meeting new bird friends drove away
the monotony of the long chain of ponds
and great curve of beach and undulating
dunes.

The afternoon was well on when we
rounded Homer Pond, having passed
Watcha and its many tributaries and
headed inland across a waste of marsh
toward a little red shooting hut near the
head of Long Cove. We found the camp
and its contents exactly as our herculean
driver of the morning had described it, and
after a meagre supper we stretched our-
selves full length upon the grass on a little
hill back of the hut and watched the sun-
set to the distant drum music of the
breaking waves.

Those two cool hours stretched on the
grass were restful to mind and body after
our long trudge over the hot sand and
mosquito and gnat inhabited marsh. I
drank in the plaintive whistle of a lone
meadow lark up in the field, and the
continuous undertone of grasshopper spar-

128 ON THE BIRDS’ HIGHWAY

row music, —that tinkling of tiny bells,
—made one dreamy. A vesper sparrow
sang from the hut’s roof his degraded song-
sparrow melody, and then as a flock of
summer yellow-legs swung into the mud
flats of Long Cove a chorus of sweet
clear whistles drifted with the salt ocean
air to us. It was an evening of peace.
Peering into the darkness before closing
the door on the sleeping land and restless
waters, a trio of night heron cast their slow-
moving shadows on the silvery flats of the
starlit cove.

The sun had scarce risen above the
eastern dunes when we resumed our tramp
for Gay Head. Our path lay along the
shores of Great Tisbury, Black Point, and
Chilmark Ponds and over the Nasha-
quitsa cliffs. The same birds
of the previous day accom- foe
panied us or appeared from os
time to time, but on a stretch
of broad sand that separates
the Atlantic from the Black
Point waters we began to discover a num-
ber of least tern flying above us with their
larger cousins. All the way to the cliffs
a dozen or more birds would be in sight

ALONG THE BEACH 129

when one would look up and the easily
distinguishable notes would continually be
heard above those of the other species.
On that stretch of sand three piping plover
roamed and whistled their pleading notes.

A wood thrush could not sing against
the roar of waves, but such delicious notes
as the piping plover calls seem to blend
perfectly with the uproar. Here on this
tide-worn beach we saw our first flock of
ringnecks flying in a compact mass along
the pond’s edge. Against the roofs and
steeples of Tisbury, far back among the
distant trees, a long line of black ducks
swept past us while a few of the braver
ones dived and scattered in Chilmark Pond.

We found a single egg inits sandy nest,
but as there were both least tern and pip-
ing plover in the air absolute identification
was impossible.

Where the cliffs first begin to rise from
the dunes they are composed of the varied
colored clays which give Gay Head its
name and fame. Great flocks of sheep
roamed the uplands; robins took the
place of sandpipers, while white-breasted
bank swallows and red-wing blackbirds
were in the air instead of terns. Just be-

9

130 ON THE BIRDS’ HIGHWAY

fore we reached a farmhouse at which our
midday meal was to be secured, a patriarch
marsh hawk was added to our morning’s
list. Beyond this hawk,
ar Nashaquitsa Pond was, in a
es bird way, but a repetition of
the many others.
a A thunder-shower had

Es hardly passed over and the

2 rain was still falling when we
set out again on our journey to Gay Head,
then but four miles distant. The old
Indian road was over undulating hills with
miniature forests of bay bushes and general
wild shrubbery on either hand and wood
lilies brightened the path. On the right
lay Menemsha Pond and beyond the bright
Vineyard Sound and the Elisabeth Islands.
To the left, across Nashaquitsa Pond, the
ocean stretched to the horizon.

As we trudged along, new land birds
were added to our list. Brown thrashers,
catbirds and Maryland yellow-throats
dodged in the thicket from time to time
ot sought some lofty spray to sing. The
chewink was everywhere. Kingbirds that
sat on the telegraph wires were joined by
barn and tree swallows every second.

ALONG THE BEACH 131

Vesper and song sparrows ran about in the
dusty roads or slunk over the walls. Both
roseate and Wilson’s terns and cften a
stray laughing gull would pass over from
pond to pond. When we crossed a rural
bridge over Menemsha water red-wings
were scolding and a
kingfisher and a green
heron moved restlessly
about. A single Sa-
vanna sparrow drew
my attention in the
direction of a quaint
tot of a yellow warb-
ler; his parent also
discovered him at the same instant, evi-
dently much to her joy. Just before we
overtook an Indian in a dilapidated car-
riage who was chatting to a neighbor by
the roadside, three meadow larks settled
down in a meadow with a laugh.

The now degenerate Indians of Gay
Head are very hospitable people as long
as one calls them Indians. But as about
one per cent. of their blood now is Indian
and the other ninety-nine per cent. negro,
persons not accustomed to the correct
human nomenclature of these people often

132 ON THE BIRDS’ HIGHWAY

find them an uncomfortable lot. This
good Indian fisherman that we overtook
gave us a lift in his wagon nearly to the
great lighthouse, and, praising him on the
brave work done by his people when the
““Columbus’”’ was wrecked, we were fast
friends. The stern-piece bearing the name
of that ill-fated steamer, lost below those
colored cliffs on Devil’s Bridge, he pointed
out nailed above the door of an old shin-
gled barn. His brother pulled an oar in
one of the rescuing boats, he told us.

As we drove along,
stopping now and then,
while the Indian threw
out a great weak ‘fish by
the road and hallooed to
the occupants of a distant
house to come and get it,
a marsh hawk appeared
and disappeared behind
the rolling hills. Grackles
were in the mown fields and three sum-
mer yellow-legs whistled in the distance.

Rain had set in in earnest when we
reached the life-saving station, and as all
the weather prophets foretold wet weather
we cut short our tramp, left the north

ALONG THE BEACH 137

shore undiscovered, the heath hen for which
the island is famous unsought-for, and
boarded an excursion steamer for Vine-

yard Haven.

XIV

LATE SUMMER IN THE ADIRONDACKS

N the very northern border of the

Adirondacks, west of Lyon Moun-
tain, Upper Chateaugay Lake stretches
north and south between the surrounding
hills. This wonderfully beautiful lake
lies like a gentle maiden clasped in the
wide-reaching arms of her wooer, the cloud-
kissed mountain. As on the heart of a
maiden is imprinted the face of her watch-
ful lover, so on the lake’s surface one sees,
when her face is wrapped in serenity, the
profile of the distant peak.

The whole picture looking out across
the blue waters, over which a great bald
eagle or an osprey might be soaring, was
one of tranquillity. Above Bluff Point
rises the crest of “ Painter Hill” with
its burnt forest to the north. Birch Hill,
directly opposite, shuts out the ore- -bed
and the iron mine on Lyon Mountain’s

Tue CAMP aT THE SPRING.

IN THE ADIRONDACKS 137

ridge. Then the eye reaches the W
range ; while behind, the Camp, Ragged,
and Lookout mountains complete the
encircling hills. Around Bluff Point run
the narrows to the lower lake.
Across the lake the East Inlet
and the Owly-out, with their
great sloughs, join with the
greater water. At the head
of the Jake the South Inlet
enters, coming from the spring
far up through the alders.
Wide-stretching sloughs of
dead, ‘standing, and fallen
trees give companies of great
blue heron and kingfishers a
perfect paradise.

Under the shadow of a dark, moss-
covered and sepulchral forest in a shel-
tered camp I spent late August and early
September, 1897, a-birding. Life is worth
living in such a spot. Some persons be-
lieve that one must get up with the sun at
camp. A sunrise is a triumph of nature,
but about once in two weeks throughout
one’s life is often enough to drink in its
beauties. Everything becomes common-

place if seen daily. What cares the guide

138 ON THE BIRDS’ HIGHWAY

for the rising of the sun every dawn be-
hind Lyon Mountain as he crosses the
lake for the milk? The morning plunge
was taken shortly before eight, when the
blessed sun could warm with its vigorous
rays one’s shoulders while dressing, or, if
the morning air were too chilly, a fire on
the hearth took its place. Breakfast over,
a little journey along the brook through
the alders was always taken to see what
the nightly migration had brought. One
morning it might
be a_yellow-bellied
flycatcher, another
a shy water-thrush,
while yet again one
might miss the
Connecticut warbler
that chucked from
a clump of under-
brush the previous
morning. ‘The Alders,” as they came
to be called, was where one met the
warbler and the vireo contingent in gen-
eral, a stray pigeon hawk, an occasional
downy or hairy woodpecker, a perfect
congress of blue jays, a winter wren, a
song sparrow, a golden-crowned kinglet,

IN THE ADIRONDACKS 139

a nuthatch, or a wandering partridge from
the deep forest, I recognized among the
happy congregation of warblers that one
met regularly passing through on their
long journey, silent -except for an occa-
sional whisper, black-throated greens and
blues, parulas, magnolias, blackburnians,
Maryland yellow - throats
and redstarts. Nashvilles,
Canadians, black-polls, bay
breasts, black and whites,
chestnut-sideds, and oven
birds one met less often.
The loudest voice that
cheered this company’s progress in such
variety of autumnal dress, was the song,
unchanged by season, of the red-eyed
vireo. The solitary, often by his side,
might pipe up too. These bits of song
that warm the autumn air are very grate-
ful — one often wonders what makes a
warbler chance to sing occasionally on his
autumn way — perhaps he has run across
a leaf that in the spring in all its freshness
had yielded up to him a peculiarly deli-
cious grub. Man is delighted to find an
old familiar landmark of long ago — why
should not a bird be?

140 ON THE BIRDS’ HIGHWAY

After going the round of “The
Alders,’ we took a stroll to the spring,
where a junco or two were greeted, and
then up the path that led to “ The Big
Trees,” two fathers of the forest, one still
standing and the other prone. That sun-
less path was the sanctum of the thrushes.
Hermits were all along the way and a big
wood or demure olive-back might chance
to peer at one from some great moss-
covered log.

As we entered a blazed trail, perhaps
leading to Mountain Pond or Ragged
Lake, for a forenoon tramp, the stillness
of the forest was delicious. Beneath
those great trees, the pine, the hemlock,
the balsam, the yellow birch, the spruce,
moss-hung and stately, one was not alone.
There was the little downy and his big
cousin the hairy, within sight of the path
perhaps, or drumming inthe distance. A
great crest might be heard calling his
dreamy exhaust whistle. Through what
a glory those paths led! The hobble
bush, its red leaves and berries afire, stood
by the way. The fruit of the trillium,
bunchberry and jack-in-the-pulpit glowed
amongst the ground hemlock. The

IN THE ADIRONDACKS I4I

corpse-like Indian pipe, lifting their tomb-
stones on their heads, rose like ghosts from
the soil. Clintonia borealis held its rich
plum-colored fruit in air. It is the whole

luxuriance of a virgin forest — such a his-
tory of Nature’s epochs that impresses one.
Yonder great hemlock stub, punctured
by the log cock, the pileated woodpecker,
once ruler supreme of these northern
forests, alone stands crying aloud, “ Where
is my persecutor?”’ ‘* Almost extermin-
ated,’ comes the answer ; “ one in that re-
gion to-day, where there were a score not

142 ON THE BIRDS’ HIGHWAY

long since.” The ringing of the axe far up
the valley, echoing from hill to hill, reveals
only too plainly the cause. The blue jay
that, down in “ The Alders,” practises his
cousin’s notes, is recognized as a close
imitator, as the Canada jay calls from the
monkey flower, his face besmeared with
yellow stain.

The deep woods are always void of
many birds — chipmunks and red squirrels
seem to do most of the talking ; a chicka-
dee may have just led one from the path,
when, like a Fourth of July whistling
bomb, a chipmunk will rush rattling up
a log, and unless the chickadee pipes again
he is forgotten.

The noonday sun creeps through the
dense foliage when wandering homeward,
and the “kip-kip” of a passing crossbill
comes with it. Those single brilliant rays
falling here upon a lichen-covered rock,
or there over a fallen spruce, reveal the
colorless shadows, bringing out exquisite
detail.

There were six excursions I took from
time to time, to the lake, inlets, sloughs,
burnt ground, and to the spring. Each
offered its own peculiar birds.

IN THE ADIRONDACKS 143

Just before sunset when the lake and
its surrounding hills looked their loveliest
I would take an Adirondack boat and row
over its waters. A chimney swift, a tree
swallow, a scattering of barn and a large
company of cliff swallows during August
would spend those best hours of the day
with me on the lake. It was a pleasure
to see the eave swallows in such evidence.
With the smoke that drifted down from
the mine furnaces would come a caw of a
crow. Hewas a rare bird about the lake.
A spotted or a semipalmated sandpiper
one might find feeding on the protruding
sand-bars; how far the ringneck plover
that whistled from the sky seemed from
his element near that untide-washed
beach !

As the sun stole down in the
sag of Hardwood Hill, a great
change would take place in the
lakes’ and mountains’ coloring.
The waters would turn to molten
silver, the hills into a leaden olive. With
the chill of twilight, night hawks would
come and with their crazy flight seem imi-
tating the bats that dodged imaginary ob-
stacles over the water near the shores. A

144 ON THE BIRDS’ HIGHWAY

teal might pump by, disappearing in a dis-
tant slough as one was rowing homeward.
Late in the evening the quawk of a night
heron would come in the cabin door. The
guide, on his early morning row, sawa loon
occasionally through the mist — he seemed
to vanish, as it did under the sun’s rays.
As one looks out upon the hills sur-
rounding the lake, one sees here and there
great patches of burnt ground. “ Painter
Hill” has such a one on its northern side.
Far up behind the camp, a trail, running
at right angles from the one leading to the
“ Big Trees,” through tangles of wild rasp-
berry, reaches a tract of ground, growing
with little birches, great brakes and tower-
ing with gaunt trunks of the perished for-
est. There we found in the decayed mass of
fallen trees the marks where “ partridges ”
had been dusting themselves, and once
flushed a bird. White-throated sparrows,
juncos and vesper sparrows inhabited the
underbrush, rose-breasted grosbeaks, scar-
let tanagers, purple and gold finches, the
birches and other low first growth, while
stray bands of warblers would wander over
the whole of the living foliage. The
characteristic birds of the burnt ground,

IN THE ADIRONDACKS 145

however, were the hawks, woodpeckers and
flycatchers. A Cooper’s, sharp shinned, or
goshawk might be seen on the top of some
dead stub. Sapsuckers and a single flicker
one would surely find, and a wood pewee
never failed to be trying to decide among
the wealth of dead limbs which best suited
his especial taste. Once, hearing a yellow-
rumped warbler chucking violently as he
flew over, I looked up and saw a mite of
a humming bird vigorously chasing him
toward the woods. At that time of year
what offence could he have committed?

Toward the end of my visit, in Septem-
ber, with my host and guide, I started up
the lake for a night at the spring. We
left the guide to follow us with the provi-
sions with orders to meet us at the dam
for lunch. As we entered the slough at
the head of the lake, a red-breasted mer-
ganser and a whistler flew out past us.
Each bend in the inlet brought birds in
view — it might be a sedate bronzed
grackle wading along its shores, a catbird
crying in the thicket, a black-billed cuckoo
sitting over the crystal water, or some tall
tree bending with a flock of cedar birds.

Generally, however, it was a solitary sand-
Io

146 ON THE BIRDS’ HIGHWAY

piper that sprang from the mud flat and
disappeared calling around the next bend,
or remained sitting without the slightest
fear but a few feet off and eyed us. On
one occasion a greater yellow-legs, seeming
still more strangely out of place than did
the ringneck and “peep” on the lake’s
beach, was standing in the black mud.

We met the guide at noon and ate our
lunch on the spot where, a week before, we
slept under our boat among the waving
tamaracks. We began the second lap of
our journey to the spring about half after
two o'clock. I envied not the guide,
whose boat was laden with camp supplies,
pushing up through the alder-covered
inlet to the spring.

After hiding our boat, we took to the
trail on foot. Canada jays we met on
the path, and hanging dead by the neck in
a crotch of a bush I found an unlucky
blue jay. No marks of shot were on his
body, but his head was almost bald, covered
with only pin feathers. He looked like
a miniature vulture. I believe he died
a natural death. Just toward twilight a
Wilson’s thrush sang twice.

We had hardly reached the log cabin

IN THE ADIRONDACKS 147

at the spring and stretched ourselves out
upon its fragrant balsam bed, when the
face of the good-natured guide was thrust
in at the open door. “ By Jolly, but that
was a good pull,” he said. He had per-
formed the feat in about half the time we
could have done it, and I do not believe he
once relinquished the old clay pipe he held
in his teeth.

We waded about in the spring, a stretch
of water only some few inches deep, lying
between the great overhanging trees of the
forest, an exquisite spot, while the guide
prepared supper. A colony of solitary
sandpipers waded with us and a rusty
grackle scolded. We found deer tracks of
the night previous to and from an old lick.

It was nearly eight o’clock when, with
the guide, gun, and lantern, I made my
way down to the spring’s edge. A root
of a tree glowed with light as we passed.
Placing the closed light on a pole, turned
toward the long log, the deer lick across
the spring, we waited silently. The moon-
light shone down, gilding the water. It
seemed so still, and yet we could hear
so many noises. A mouse ran helter-
skelter nearly over my foot. Bats flapped

148 ON THE BIRDS’ HIGHWAY

here and there across the moon-glade.
The notes of hundreds of migrating birds
were continually to be heard. A barred
owl hooted twice far off in the woods —
adding to his regulation hoo-
hoo —hoo, hoo, hoo, along
drawn out hoo-o-o-o-o that I
thought at first was the whistle
of the engine on the Chateaugay
railroad far up the mountain’s
side. A red squirrel dropped
bark on us from an overhang-
ing limb. The stillness of the
night seemed rather, as one
listened, a babel of noises. Al-
though, far off in the woods, at
times we thought we heard a deer break-
ing underbrush on his way to the spring,
none came in, so at twelve o’clock we
stumbled back to sue Mice had
amused themselves by playing tag over
my host’s face every time he had tried to
go to sleep, and had endeavored to carry
off everything on the table. If they be-
haved thus after I had gone to sleep little
I cared, for, rolled in my blanket on the
dence bales bed after my long vigil,
sleep was oh! so welcome.

IN THE ADIRONDACKS 149

Next morning we visited a tract of
ground almost laid bare by the lumber-
men and were much pleased to find, beside
great flocks of robins and innumerable
winter wrens in the underbrush,
two American three-toed wood-
peckers. Their notes are harsher
than those of the hairy or sap-
sucker, which were also about,
and one beat a tattoo on a dead
tree loud enough to make a drummer boy
green with envy. A broad-winged hawk
was seen flying over the spring and a brace
of woodcock were flushed from the alders
where the inlet enters.

The last occupant of the camp had
evidently had a little misunderstanding
with a porcupine, for ceiling, walls, win-
dow, and floor were covered with his
quills. That afternoon, as we left the foot
of the inlet on our way homeward, two
swamp sparrows were discovered in the
grass on the slough’s edge where the red-
wings dwell and a pigeon hawk was in
command of the slough where but a day
or two ago a red-shouldered hawk had
held sway.

The evening preceding my departure

I50 ON THE BIRDS’ HIGHWAY

drew near and with it one of the most
beautiful sunsets I have ever beheld.
The atmosphere was as clear as crystal.
To the top of Lyon Mountain seemed but
a short walk. The lake’s surface was an
exquisite blue, dancing with light. Every
hill stood out against its background,
either mountain or sky, sharply defined.
Instantaneously with the sky tingeing a
faint pink, the water on the western shore
began to turn leaden, while the little waves
looked like mercury running over its
surface. The west turned a deeper pink,
the eastern sky a hazy purple. Slowly
the dark waters crept across the lake and
color rose upon the foothills. The west
was red and the east becoming still more
purple. The waters were turning rose-
ate; the color seemed to run about as
oil between the dying waves. The sun
had sunk, yet still the mountain’s crest
was golden with its light. Long fingers
of flame reached up behind the hill across
the sky; mock fingers stretched across
the lake. Then slowly the sun withdrew
its grasp upon the scene, withdrew her
outreached hand, turned down her golden
eye from off the mountain’s peak ; all light

IN THE ADIRONDACKS I51

had faded, all looked cold. Forms became
mere outlines and the chill breath of even-
ing whispered night; mist hung round. I
felt, as I watched that sunset turning from
warmth and light to chill and darkness, as
if I were looking into the depths of some
dying creature’s eye, watching life fade
and death creep in—the soul fleeting as
the sun had sunk — until mist had shut
out all light.

Appendix

Complete lists of the Birds observed at
various localities where a number of

the foregoing chapters were written.

BIRDS OF BRISTOL, RHODE ISLAND

Io.

CuHapters II. anp VII.

Colymbus holbellii — Red-necked
Grebe.

. Colymbus auritus — Horned Grebe.

Gavia imber — Loon.

Larus argentatus smithsonianus —
American Herring Gull.

Sterna hirundo — Wilson’s Tern.

Merganser serrator — Red-breasted
Merganser.

Clangula clangula americana — Ameri-
can Golden-eye.

Oidemia americana— American Scoter.

Oidemia deglandi — W hite-winged
Scoter.

Branta canadensis — Canada Goose.

154

Il.
LS.
1%.
14.

ie.
16.

17.
18.

19.
20.

21.
22.

23.

24.
pe

26.
cae

28.
29.

APPENDIX

Branta bernicla — Brant.

Ardea herodias — Great Blue Heron.

Ardea virescens — Green Heron.

Nycticorax nycticorax nevius — Black-
crowned Night Heron.

Philohela minor — American Wood-
cock.

Ereunetes pusillus—Semipalmated
Sandpiper.

Actitis macularia — Spotted Sandpiper.

Colinus virginianus — Bob-white.

Circus hudsonius — Marsh Hawk.

Buteo lineatus — Red-shouldered
Hawk.

Pandion haliaétus carolinensis—Osprey.

Megascops asio— Screech Owl.

Coccyzus erythrophthalmus — Black-
billed Cuckoo.

Ceryle alcyon — Belted Kingfisher.

Dryobates pubescens medianus — Downy
Woodpecker.

Sphyrapicus varius — Yellow-bellied
Sapsucker.

Colaptes auratus luteus — Northern
Flicker.

Chetura pelagica — Chimney Swift.

Trochilus colubris — Ruby-throated
Hummingbird.

APPENDIX 155

Tyrannus tyrannus — Kingbird.

. Mytarchus crinitus — Crested Fly-

catcher.

. Sayornis phebe — Phoebe.
. Contopus virens — Wood Pewee.

Empidonax minimus — Least Fly-
catcher.

. Cyanocitta cristata — Blue Jay.

. Corvus americanus — American Crow.
. Dolichonyx oryzivorus — Bobolink.

. Molothrus ater — Cowbird.

. Agelaius pheniceus — Red-winged

Blackbird.

. Sturnella magna — Meadow Lark.
. ILcterus galbula — Baltimore Oriole.
. Scolecophagus carolinus — Rusty

Grackle.

. Quiscalus quiscula (?)— Purple Grackle.

Carpodacus purpureus — Purple Finch.

. Passer domesticus — English Sparrow.
. Loxia curvirostra minor — American

Crossbill.

. Astragalinus tristis — American Gold-

finch.

. Passerina nivalis — Snowflake.
. Powcetes gramineus — Vesper Sparrow.

. Ammodromus sandwichensis savanna —

Savanna Sparrow.

APPENDIX

. Lonotrichia albicollis—W hite-throated

Sparrow.

. Spizella monticola — Tree Sparrow.
. Spizella socialis — Chipping Sparrow.

Spizella pusilla — Field Sparrow.

. Funco hiemalis — Slate-colored Junco.
. Melospiza fasciata — Song Sparrow.

. Passerella iliaca — Fox Sparrow.

. Progne subis — Purple Martin.

. Petrochelidon lunifrons — Cliff Swal-

low.

Hirundo erythrogastra — Barn Swal-
low.

Tachycineta bicolor — Tree Swallow.

. Ampelis cedrorum— Cedar Waxwing.
. Vireo olivaceus — Red-eyed Vireo.
. Mniotilta varia — Black-and-white

‘Warbler.

. Compsothlypis americana usneea —

Northern Parula Warbler.

. Dendroica estiva — Yellow Warbler.
. Dendroica coronata— Myrtle Warbler.
. Geothlypis trichas— Maryland Yel-

low-throat.

. Setophaga ruticilla — American Red-

start.

. Anthus pensilvanicus — American

Pipit.

81.
82.

APPENDIX 157

. Galeoscoptes carolinensis —- Catbird.
. Harporbynchus rufus — Brown

Thrasher.

. Troglodytes aédon — House Wren.
. Certhia familiaris fusca—Brown

Creeper.

. Sitta carolinensis — White-breasted

Nuthatch.

. Parus atricapillus — Chickadee.

. Regulus satrapa — Golden-crowned
Kinglet.

. Regulus calendula — Ruby-crowned

Kinglet.

. Hylocichla fuscescens — Wilson's

Thrush.

. Hylocichla aonalaschke pallasii — Her-

mit Thrush.
Merula migratoria — American Robin.
Sialia siais — Bluebird.

BIRDS OF WASHINGTON, D. C., AND

I.

2.

CHEVY CHASE, MARYLAND

CuHaPTerR V.

Larus argentatus smithsonianus—Amer-
ican Herring Gull.

Zenaidura macroura — Mourning
Dove.

158

APPENDIX

Cathartes cura — Turkey Vulture.

Cathartes uruba — Black Vulture (?)
The identification of this bird was
practically positive without taking
of specimen.

. Dryobates pubescens medianus—Downy

Woodpecker.
Colaptes auratus luteus — Northern
Flicker.
Corvus americanus — American Crow.
Corvus ossifragus — Fish Crow.
Quiscalus quiscula — Purple Grackle.
Poecetes gramineus— Vesper Sparrow.
Zonotrichia albicollis—White-
throated Sparrow.
Spizella monticola —'Tree Sparrow.

. Funco hiemalis — Slate-colored Junco.
. Melospiza fasciata — Song Sparrow.

Passerella iliaca — Fox Sparrow.
Cardinalis cardinalis — Cardinal.

Thryothorus ludovicianus — Carolina
Wren.

. Anorthura hiemalis— Winter Wren.
. Sitta carolinensis — White-breasted

Nuthatch.

. Sitta canadensis — Red-breasted Nut-

hatch.
Parus bicolor — Tufted Titmouse.

APPENDIX 159

22. Parus carolinensis — Carolina Chick-
adee.

23. Merula migratoria —- American Robin.

24. Stalia siais — Bluebird.

BIRDS OF HUBBARDSTON, MASSACHU-
SETTS, AND VICINITY

CuHapTer VIII.

1. Botaurus lentiginosus — American
Bittern.

2. Ardea herodias — Great Blue Heron.

3. Ardea virescens — Green Heron.

Nycticorax nycticorax nevius — Black-

crowned Night Heron.

5. <Actitis macularia— Spotted Sand-
piper.

6. Colinus virginianus — Bob-white.

7. Bonasa umbellus — Ruffed Grouse.

8. Zenaidura macroura — Mourning
Dove.

g. Circus hudsonius — Marsh Hawk.

o. Coccyzus erythrophthalmus — Black-
billed Cuckoo.

11. Ceryle alcyon — Belted Kingfisher.

12. Dryobates pubescens medianus—Downy

Woodpecker.

160
13.

14.
Des
16.

17.
18.

19.
20.

21.
225

a3.
24.

ac.
26.

Da
28.
29.
3°.

4l:
ces
33:
34.

APPENDIX

Colaptes auratus luteus — Northern
Flicker.

Chordeilis virginianus — Night Hawk.

Chetura pelagica — Chimney Swift.

Trochilus colubris — Ruby-throated
Hummingbird.

Tyrannus tyrannus — Kingbird.

Sayornis phebe — Pheebe.

Contopus virens — Wood Pewee.

Empidonax minimus — Least Fly-
catcher.

Cyanocitta cristata — Blue Jay.

Corvus americanus — American Crow.

Dolichonyx oryzivorus — Bobolink.

Agelaius pheniceus — Red-wing Black-
bird.

Sturnella magna— Meadow Lark.

Carpodacus purpureus — Purple Finch.

Astragalinus tristis — American Gold-
finch.

Powcetes gramineus — Vesper Sparrow.

Ammodromus sandwichensis savanna —
Savanna Sparrow.

Zonotrichia albicollis—W hite-throated
Sparrow.

Spizella socialis — Chipping Sparrow.

Spizella pusilla — Field Sparrow.

Funco hiemalis — Slate-colored Junco.

Melospiza fasciata — Song Sparrow.

APPENDIX 161

. Pipilo erythrophthalmus — Vc vhee.

. Passerina cyanea — Indigo bi d.

. Piranga erythromelas—Scarlet anager.
. Petrochelidon lunifrons—Cliff swallow.
. Hirundo erythrogastra— Barn Swallow.

Tachycineta bicolor —Tree Swallow.

. Ampelis cedrorum — Cedar Waxwing.
. Vireo olivaceus — Red-eyed Vireo.
. Mauiotilta varia — Black-and-white

Warbler.

. Compsothlypis americana usneea —

Northern Parula Warbler.

. Helminthophila rubricapilla —\lash-

ville Warbler.

. Dendroica pensylvanica— Chest 1ut-

sided Warbler.

. Dendroica virens — Black-thro: ted

Green Warbler.

. Seiurus auricapillus — Oven bird.

Geothlypis trichas— Maryland Yeli sw-
throat.

. Setophaga ruticilla — American R :d-

start.
Galeoscoptes carolinensis — Catbird.

. Harporhynchus rufus — Brown

Thrasher.

. Parus atricapillus — Chickadee.

Hylocichla mustelinus—W ood Thrus}.

Il

162

to VN

ea,
£4.

APPENDIX

Hylocichla fuscescens — Wilson's
Thrush.
Merula migratoria— American Robin.

BIRDS OF CHATEAUGAY LAKE,
NEW YORK
CuHaprer XIV
Podylymbus podiceps — Pied-billed
Grebe.*

Gavia imber — Loon.

. Larus argentatus smithsonianus — Her-

ring Gull.*

Merganser serrator — Re d-breasted
Merganser (?)

Lophodytes cucullatus— Hooded Mer-
ganser.*

Anas obscura — Black Duck.

. Nettion carolinensis — Green-winged

‘Teal.

Dafila acuta — Pintail.* (?)

Clangula clangula americana — Ameri-
can Golden-eye.

. Oidemia perspicillata — Surf Scoter.*
. Botaurus lentiginosus— American Bit-

tern.*
Ardea herodias — Great Blue Heron.
Nycticorax nycticorax nevius — Night
Heron.

14.
re.
16.

17.
18.

19.
20.

OTe
22s

23.
24.
25.
26.

27.
28.
29.
30.
31.
22.

age

34

APPENDIX 163

Philohela minor—American Woodcock.

Gallinago delicata — Wilson’s Snipe.*

Tringa maculata—Pectoral Sandpiper.*

Tringa minutilla — Least Sandpiper.*

Ereunetes pusillus — Semipalmated
Sandpiper.

Calidris arenaria — Sanderling.*

Totanus melanoleucus — Greater Yel-
low-legs.

Totanus flavipes— Lesser Y ellow-legs.*

Helodromas solitarius —Solitary Sand-
piper.

Actitis macularia — Spotted Sandpiper.

Charadrius dominicus — American
Golden Plover.*

A gialitis semipalmata — Semipalmated
Plover.

Bonasa umbellus togata— Canadian
Ruffed Grouse.

Circus hudsonius — Marsh Hawk.*

Accipiter velox—Sharp-shinned Hawk.

Accipiter cooperi — Cooper’s Hawk. (?)

Accipiter atricapillus — Goshawk.

Buteo borealis — Red-tailed Hawk.*

Buteo lineatus — Red-shouldered
Hawk.

Buteo latissimus — Broad-winged
Hawk.

Halieetus leucocephalus— Bald Eagle.

APPENDIX

. Falco columbarius — Pigeon Hawk.

. Falco sparverius — Sparrow Hawk.*

. Pandion haliaétus carolinensis—Osprey.
. Syrnium nebulosum — Barred Owl.

. Megascops asio— Screech Owl.*

. Coccyzus erythrophthalmus — Black-

billed Cuckoo.

. Ceryle alcyon — Kingfisher.
. Dryobates villosus — Hairy Wood-

pecker.

. Dryobates pubescens medianus — North-

ern Downy Woodpecker.

. Picoides arcticus — Arctic Three-toed

Woodpecker.*

. Picoides americanus — American

Three-toed Woodpecker.

. Sphyrapicus varius — Yellow- bellied

Sapsucker.

. Ceophleus pileatus — Pileated Wood-

pecker.

. Colaptes auratus luteus — Northern

Flicker.

. Chordeiles virginianus— Night Hawk.
. Chetura pelagica — Chimney Swift.
. Trochilus colubris — Ruby - throated

Hummingbird.

. Tyrannus tyrannus — Kingbird.
. Myiarchus crinitus — Crested Fly-

catcher.

APPENDIX 165

Contopus virens — Wood Pewee.

. Empidonax flaviventris — Yellow-

bellied Flycatcher.

. Empidonax trailhi alnorum — Alder

Flycatcher.*
Empidonax minimus — Least Fly-
catcher.*

. Cyanocitta cristata — Blue Jay.

. Perisoreus canadensis — Canada Jay.

. Corvus americanus — American Crow.
. Agelaius pheniceus — Red-winged

Blackbird.

. Scolecophagus carolinus — Rusty

Grackle.

: Quiscalus quiscula auneus — Bronzed

Grackle.
Carpodacus purpureus — Purple Finch.

. Loxia curvirostra minor — American

Crossbill.

. Astragalinus tristis— American Gold-

finch.

. Powcetes gramineus — Vesper Sparrow.

row.

. Lonotrichia albicollis — White-throated

Sparrow.
Spizella socialis — Chipping Sparrow.

. Funco hiemalis — Junco.
. Melospiza fasciata — Song Sparrow.
. Melospiza georgiana—Swamp Sparrow.

166

vo?

APPENDIX

Zamelodia ludoviciana — Rose-breasted
Grosbeak.

. Piranga erythromelas—Scarlet

Tanager.

. Petrochelidon lunifrons — Cliff Swallow.
. Hirundo erythrogastra—Barn Swallow.
. Tachycineta bicolor — Tree Swallow.

. Clivicola riparia — Bank Swallow.

. Ampelis cedrorum — Cedar Waxwing.

Vireo olivaceus — Red-eyed Vireo.

. Vireo philadelphicus— Philadelphia

Vireo.

. Vireo flavifrons — Yellow-throated

Vireo.

. Vireo solitarius — Solitary Vireo.
. Mniotilta varia— Black and White

Warbler.
Helminthophila rubricapilla — Nash-
ville Warbler.

. Compsothlypis americana usnee —

Northern Parula Warbler.

. Dendroica estiva — Yellow Warbler.
. Dendroica carulescens—Black-throated

Blue Warbler.

. Dendroica coronata— Myrtle Warb-

ler.

. Dendroica maculosa— Magnolia Warb-

ler.

APPENDIX 167

. Dendroica pensylvanica — Chestnut-

sided Warbler.

2. Dendroica castanea— Bay-breasted

Warbler.

. Dendroica striata — Black-poll Warb-

ler.

. Dendroica blackburnie — Black-

burnian Warbler.

. Dendroica virens — Black-throated

Green Warbler.

. Dendroica palmarum (?) — Palm

Warbler.

. Seiurus aurocapillus — Oven bird.
. Seurus noveboracensis—Water

Thrush.

. Geothlypis agilis—Connecticut

Warbler.

. Geothlypis philadelphia — Mourning

‘Warbler.

. Geothlypis trichas — Maryland Yel-

low-throat.

. Setophaga ruticilla — American Red-

start.

. Wilsonia pusilla—Wilson’s Warbler.*
. Wilsonia canadensis — Canadian

‘Warbler.

. Anthus pensilvanicus — American

Pipit.

11%,
Tigs
Tig
TiG6;
(17:

118.
11g.

APPENDIX

. Galeoscoptes carolinensis — Catbird.
. Anorthura hiemalis — Winter Wren.
. Certhia familiaris fusca — Brown

Creeper,”

. Sitta carolinensis — White-breasted

Nuthatch.

. Sitta canadensis — Red-bellied Nut-

hatch.

. Parus atricapillus — Chickadee.
. Regulus satrapa — Golden-crowned

Kinglet.

Regulus calendula — Ruby-crowned
Kinglet.*

Hylocichla mustelinus — Wood
Thrush.

Hylocichla _fuscescens — Wilson's
Thrush.

Aylocichla ustulatus swainsonit —
Olive-backed Thrush.

Hylocichla aonalaschke pallasti—Her-
mit Thrush.

Merula migratoria— American Robin.

Sialia sialis — Bluebird.

Names having an * after them are species that Mr.
George C. Shattuck of Boston has kindly allowed me
to add to this list, which are species he has observed
during the past five years at Chateaugay, in addition
to the species I had the pleasure of seeing with him in
the autumn of 1897.

Index

Bittern, American, 83.
Bobolink, 60, 82, 117.
Bob-white, 5, 82, 117.
Blackbird, Red-winged, 74, 85, 100, 124, 129,
131.
Bluebird, 46, 50, 51.
Bunting, Snow, 8, 18, 23, 24, 25, 32, 33.
“ Butcherbird,” 62.
Buzzard, Turkey, 51, 52.
Catbird, 73, 82, 87, 130, 145.
Cardinal, 49, 51.
Cedarbird, 86, 145.
Chewink, 86, 121, 130.
Chickadee, 3, 4, 8, 15, 32, 35, 37, 38, 40, 76,
86, 100, 102, 110, 122, 142.
Carolina, 47.
Hudson Bay, 9, 35.
Tufted, 47.
Coot, 17, 118.
Cowbird, 72, 75.
Creeper, Black and White, 85.
Brown, 4, 7, 64, 100.
Crossbill, American, 9, 18, 32, 37, 38, 41, 142.

170 INDEX

Crossbill, Red, 26, 35, 39.
White-winged, 35.
Crow, American, 2, 5, 15, 24, 25, 29, 48, 51,
73, 85, 101, 109, 125, 143.
Fish, 48, 51.
Cuckoo, Black-billed, 82, 145.
Dove, Mourning, 51, 88.
Duck, Black, 129.
Eagle, Bald, 111, 136.
Finch, Pine, 9, 144.
Purple, 86.
Flicker, 6, 16, 25, 75, 85, 101, 102, 145.
Flycatcher, Crested, 140.
Least, 81.
Yellow-bellied, 138.
Goldfinch, American, 2, 9, 75, 82, 94, IOI, 144.
Goose, Canada, 76. i
Goshawk, American, 145.
Grackle, Bronzed, 46, 124, 132, 145.
Rusty, 147.
Grebe, Horned, 17.
Red-necked, 17.
Grosbeak, Rose-breasted, 144.
Pine, 11, 42.
Grouse, Ruffed, 5, 38, 40.
Gull, Herring, 16, 23, 25, 29, 73, 109, 118,
125.
Laughing, 126, 131.
Winter, 17.
Heath Hen, 133.

INDEX 171

Hawk, Broad-winged, 149.
Cooper’s, 145.
Fish, 71, 23, 166.
Marsh, 85, 123, 130, 132.
Night, 82, 143.
Pigeon, 138, 149.
Red-shouldered, 4, 149.
Sharp-shinned, 145.
Sparrow, IIo.
Heron, Black-crowned Night, 7, 84, 102, I11,
124, 125, 144.
Great Blue, 111, 137.
Green, 86, 131.
Hummingbird, Ruby-throated, 122, 145.
Indigo-bird, 87.
Jay, Blue, 4, 6, 37, 38,42, 85, Ted, Iry, 122,
138, 142, 146.
Canada, 36, 41, 142, 146.
Junco, Slate-colored, 9, 11, 48, 52, 88, 101,
109, 140, 144.
Kingbird, 82, 86, 91, 92, 93, 96, 110, 125, 130.
Kingfisher, Belted, 73, 87, 100, 102, 124, 131,
137.
Kinglet, Golden-crowned, 5, 37, 40, 111, 138.
Lark, Horned, 25.
Meadow, 6, 24, 71, 127, 131.
Shore, 8, 18, 23, 24.
Log Cock, 141.
Longspur, Lapland, 8.
Loon, 6, 17, 118, 144.

172 INDEX

Maryland Yellow-throat, 65, 82, 122, 130, 139.
Merganser, Red-breasted, 17, 40, 145.
Mockingbird, 9.
Moosebird, 6.
Nuthatch, Red-breasted, 32, 38, 39, 40.
White-breasted, 4, 38, 39, 40, 100,
102, 139.
Oriole, Baltimore, 95.
Osprey, 74, 109, 136.
Ovenbird, 65, 85, 139.
Owl, Barred, 7, 148.
Screech, 7.
Short-eared, 18.
Snowy, 18, I1I.
“ Partridge,” 35, 38, 139, 144.
Peabodybird, 110.
Pewee, Wood, 88, 122, 145.
Phoebe, 64, 81, 82, 102.
Plover, Piping, 125, 129.
Semipalmated, 129.
Redpoll, g.
Redstart, American, 85, 110, 139.
Ringneck, 129, 143, 145.
Robin, American, 5, 46, 58, 59, 80, 88, 109,
129, 149.
English, 56.
Sandpiper, Least, r1o.
Purple, 17.
Semipalmated, 143.
Solitary, 102, 145, 147.

INDEX 173

Sandpiper, Spotted, 86, 102, 110, 125, 143.
Sapsucker, Yellow-bellied, 145, 149.
Shrike, Northern, 9, 62, 63, 100, 102.
Siskin, Pine, 9, 40.
Snowbird, 7.
Snowflake, 8.
Sparrow, Chipping, 76, 81, 91, 93, 94, 101,
10g, 122.
Field, 86, 101, 110, 122.
Fox, 50, 51, 52, 100, I10.
Grasshopper, 127.
Ipswich, 25.
Savanna, 81, 101, 131.
Sharp-tailed, 126.
Song, 3, 9, 11, 16, 46, 50, 51, 52, 57,
81, 91, 96, 10g, 122, 125, 128, 131,
138.
Swamp, 149.
Tree, 8, 26, 48, 49, 51, 52.
Vesper, 74, 82, 87, 101, 122, 128,
131, 144.
White-throated, 49, 59, 82, 101, 109,
III, 144.
Swallow, Barn, 80, 101, 109, 125, 130, 143.
Bank, 129.
Cliff, 81, 143.
‘Eave, 143.
Tree, 80, 130, 143.
White-bellied, 74, ro1, 129.
Swift, Chimney, 80, 101, 109, 122, 143.

174 INDEX

Tanager, Scarlet, 85, 88, 144.

Teal, Green-winged, 144.

Tern, Least, 125, 128, 129.
Wilson’s, 113, 125, 131.
Roseate, 125, 131.

Titmouse, Tufted, 51.

Thrasher, Brown, 73, 86, 122, 130.

Thrush, Hermit, 140.

Olive-backed, 140.
Water 138.
Wilson’s, 146.
Wood, 129, 140.

Towhee, 88.

Veery, 84.

Vireo, Red-eyed, 82, 88, 110, 122, 139.
Solitary, 139.

Vulture, Black, 52.

Warbler, Audubon, 112.

Bay-breasted, 139.

Black and White, 139.

Black-throated Blue, 139.

Blackburnian, 139.

Black-poll, 110, 112, 139.

Black-throated Green, 82, 85, 122,
139.

Canadian, 139.

Chestnut-sided, 85, 139.

Connecticut, 138.

Magnolia, 139.

Myrtle, 15, 18.

INDEX 175

Warbler, Nashville, 85, 139.
Parula, 139.
Pine, 112, 122.
Prairie 122.
Yellow, 131.
Yellow-rumped, 6, 76, 112, 145.
Whistler, 113, 145.
Woodcock, American, 60, 62, 149.
Woodpecker, American Three-toed, 140.
Downy, 4, 6, 38, 100, 138, 140.
Golden-winged, 110.
Hairy, 6, 38, 39, 138, 140, 149.
Pileated, 141.
Wren, Carolina, 50.
House, 50.
Marsh, 50.
Winter, 9, 49, 138, 149.
Yellow-legs, Greater, 11, 127, 146.
Lesser, 15, 101, 226, 16%,

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