WAYS OF WOOD FOLK

BY

WILLIAM J. LONG

BOSTON, U.S.A.
GINN & COMPANY, PUBLISHERS
The Athenæum Press
1902

COPYRIGHT, 1899
BY WILLIAM J. LONG

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

To Plato, the owl, who looks
over my shoulder as I write, and
who knows all about the woods.

PREFACE.

“All crows are alike,” said a wise man, speaking of
politicians. That is quite true—in the dark. By
daylight, however, there is as much difference, within and
without, in the first two crows one meets as in the first two
men or women. I asked a little child once, who was telling me
all about her chicken, how she knew her chicken from twenty
others just like him in the flock. “How do I know my
chicken? I know him by his little face,” she said. And
sure enough, the face, when you looked at it closely, was
different from all other faces.

This is undoubtedly true of all birds and all animals. They
recognize each other instantly amid multitudes of their kind;
and one who watches them patiently sees quite as many odd
ways and individualities among Wood Folk as among other
people. No matter, therefore, how well you know the habits
of crows or the habits of caribou in general, watch the first one
that crosses your path as if he were an entire stranger; open
eyes to see and heart to interpret, and you will surely find
some new thing, some curious unrecorded way, to give delight
to your tramp and bring you home with a new interest.

This individuality of the wild creatures will account, perhaps,
for many of these Ways, which can seem no more
curious or startling to the reader than to the writer when he
first discovered them. They are, almost entirely, the records
of personal observation in the woods and fields. Occasionally,
when I know my hunter or woodsman well, I have taken his
testimony, but never without weighing it carefully, and proving
it whenever possible by watching the animal in question
for days or weeks till I found for myself that it was all true.

The sketches are taken almost at random from old note-books
and summer journals. About them gather a host of
associations, of living-over-agains, that have made it a delight
to write them; associations of the winter woods, of apple
blossoms and nest-building, of New England uplands and
wilderness rivers, of camps and canoes, of snowshoes and
trout rods, of sunrise on the hills, when one climbed for the
eagle’s nest, and twilight on the yellow wind-swept beaches,
where the surf sobbed far away, and wings twanged like reeds
in the wind swooping down to decoys,—all thronging about
one, eager to be remembered if not recorded. Among them,
most eager, most intense, most frequent of all associations,
there is a boy with nerves all a-tingle at the vast sweet
mystery that rustled in every wood, following the call of the
winds and the birds, or wandering alone where the spirit moved
him, who never studied nature consciously, but only loved it,
and who found out many of these Ways long ago, guided
solely by a boy’s instinct.

If they speak to other boys, as to fellow explorers in the
always new world, if they bring back to older children happy
memories of a golden age when nature and man were not
quite so far apart, then there will be another pleasure in
having written them.

My thanks are due, and are given heartily, to the editors
of The Youth’s Companion for permission to use several
sketches that have already appeared, and to Mr. Charles
Copeland, the artist, for his care and interest in preparing
the illustrations.

Wm. J. Long.

Andover, Mass., June, 1899.

CONTENTS.

[Pg 1]

WAYS OF WOOD FOLK.

I. FOX-WAYS.

Did you ever meet a fox face to face, surprising
him quite as much as yourself?
If so, you were deeply impressed, no
doubt, by his perfect dignity and self-possession.
Here is how the meeting
generally comes about.

It is a late winter afternoon. You are swinging
rapidly over the upland pastures, or loitering along
the winding old road through the woods. The color
deepens in the west; the pines grow black against it;
the rich brown of the oak leaves seems to glow everywhere
in the last soft light; and the mystery that
never sleeps long in the woods begins to rustle
again in the thickets. You are busy with your own
thoughts, seeing nothing, till a flash of yellow passes
before your eyes, and a fox stands in the path before
you, one foot uplifted, the fluffy brush swept aside in
graceful curve, the bright eyes looking straight into[Pg 2]
yours—nay, looking through them to read the intent
which gives the eyes their expression. That is always
the way with a fox; he seems to be looking at your
thoughts.

Surprise, eagerness, a lively curiosity are all in
your face on the instant; but the beautiful creature
before you only draws himself together with quiet
self-possession. He lifts his head slightly; a superior
look creeps into his eyes; he seems to be speaking.
Listen—

“You are surprised?”—this with an almost imperceptible
lift of his eyebrows, which reminds you
somehow that it is really none of your affair. “O,
I frequently use this road in attending to some
matters over in the West Parish. To be sure, we
are socially incompatible; we may even regard each
other as enemies, unfortunately. I did take your
chickens last week; but yesterday your unmannerly
dogs hunted me. At least we may meet and pass as
gentlemen. You are the older; allow me to give
you the path.”

Dropping his head again, he turns to the left,
English fashion, and trots slowly past you. There is
no hurry; not the shadow of suspicion or uneasiness.
His eyes are cast down; his brow wrinkled, as if in
deep thought; already he seems to have forgotten
your existence. You watch him curiously as he [Pg 3]reenters
the path behind you and disappears over the
hill. Somehow a queer feeling, half wonder, half
rebuke, steals over you, as if you had been outdone
in courtesy, or had passed a gentleman without sufficiently
recognizing him.

Ah, but you didn’t watch sharply enough! You
didn’t see, as he circled past, that cunning side gleam
of his yellow eyes, which understood your attitude
perfectly. Had you stirred, he would have vanished
like a flash. You didn’t run to the top of the hill
where he disappeared, to see that burst of speed the
instant he was out of your sight. You didn’t see
the capers, the tail-chasing, the high jumps, the quick
turns and plays; and then the straight, nervous gallop,
which told more plainly than words his exultation
that he had outwitted you and shown his superiority.

Reynard, wherever you meet him, whether on the
old road at twilight, or on the runway before the
hounds, impresses you as an animal of dignity and
calculation. He never seems surprised, much less
frightened; never loses his head; never does things
hurriedly, or on the spur of the moment, as a scatter-brained
rabbit or meddling squirrel might do. You
meet him, perhaps as he leaves the warm rock on the
south slope of the old oak woods, where he has been
curled up asleep all the sunny afternoon. (It is easy
to find him there in winter.) Now he is off on his[Pg 4]
nightly hunt; he is trotting along, head down, brows
deep-wrinkled, planning it all out.

“Let me see,” he is thinking, “last night I hunted
the Draper woods. To-night I’ll cross the brook just
this side the old bars, and take a look into that pasture-corner
among the junipers. There’s a rabbit
which plays round there on moonlight nights; I’ll
have him presently. Then I’ll go down to the big
South meadow after mice. I haven’t been there
for a week; and last time I got six. If I don’t find
mice, there’s that chicken coop of old Jenkins.
Only”—He stops, with his foot up, and listens a
minute—”only he locks the coop and leaves the dog
loose ever since I took the big rooster. Anyway I’ll
take a look round there. Sometimes Deacon Jones’s
hens get to roosting in the next orchard. If I can
find them up an apple tree, I’ll bring a couple down
with a good trick I know. On the way—Hi,
there!”

In the midst of his planning he gives a grasshopper-jump
aside, and brings down both paws hard on a
bit of green moss that quivered as he passed. He
spreads his paws apart carefully; thrusts his nose
down between them; drags a young wood-mouse
from under the moss; eats him; licks his chops
twice, and goes on planning as if nothing had
happened.[Pg 5]

“On the way back, I’ll swing round by the Fales
place, and take a sniff under the wall by the old
hickory, to see if those sleepy skunks are still there
for the winter. I’ll have that whole family before
spring, if I’m hungry and can’t find anything else.
They come out on sunny days; all you have to do is
just hide behind the hickory and watch.”

So off he goes on his well-planned hunt; and if
you follow his track to-morrow in the snow, you will
see how he has gone from one hunting ground directly
to the next. You will find the depression where he
lay in a clump of tall dead grass and watched a while
for the rabbit; reckon the number of mice he caught
in the meadow; see his sly tracks about the chicken
coop, and in the orchard; and pause a moment at the
spot where he cast a knowing look behind the hickory
by the wall,—all just as he planned it on his way to
the brook.

If, on the other hand, you stand by one of his runways
while the dogs are driving him, expecting, of
course, to see him come tearing along in a desperate
hurry, frightened out of half his wits by the savage
uproar behind him, you can only rub your eyes in
wonder when a fluffy yellow ball comes drifting
through the woods towards you, as if the breeze
were blowing it along. There he is, trotting down
the runway in the same leisurely, self-possessed way,[Pg 6]
wrapped in his own thoughts apparently, the same
deep wrinkles over his eyes. He played a trick or
two on a brook, down between the ponds, by jumping
about on a lot of stones from which the snow had
melted, without wetting his feet (which he dislikes),
and without leaving a track anywhere. While the
dogs are puzzling that out, he has plenty of time to
plan more devices on his way to the big hill, with its
brook, and old walls, and rail fences, and dry places
under the pines, and twenty other helps to an active
brain.

First he will run round the hill half a dozen times,
crisscrossing his trail. That of itself will drive the
young dogs crazy. Then along the top rail of a
fence, and a long jump into the junipers, which hold
no scent, and another jump to the wall where there is
no snow, and then—

“Oh, plenty of time, no hurry!” he says to himself,
turning to listen a moment. “That dog with the big
voice must be old Roby. He thinks he knows all
about foxes, just because he broke his leg last year,
trying to walk a sheep-fence where I’d been. I’ll
give him another chance; and oh, yes! I’ll creep up
the other side of the hill, and curl up on a warm rock
on the tiptop, and watch them all break their heads
over the crisscross, and have a good nap or two, and
think of more tricks.”[Pg 7]

So he trots past you, still planning; crosses the
wall by a certain stone that he has used ever since
he was a cub fox; seems to float across an old pasture,
stopping only to run about a bit among some
cow tracks, to kill the scent; and so on towards his
big hill. Before he gets there he will have a skilful
retreat planned, back to the ponds, in case old Roby
untangles his crisscross, or some young fool-hound
blunders too near the rock whereon he sits, watching
the game.

If you meet him now, face to face, you will see no
quiet assumption of superiority; unless perchance he
is a young fox, that has not learned what it means to
be met on a runway by a man with a gun when the
dogs are driving. With your first slightest movement
there is a flash of yellow fur, and he has vanished
into the thickest bit of underbrush at hand.—Don’t
run; you will not see him again here. He
knows the old roads and paths far better than you
do, and can reach his big hill by any one of a dozen
routes where you would never dream of looking.
But if you want another glimpse of him, take the
shortest cut to the hill. He may take a nap, or sit
and listen a while to the dogs, or run round a swamp
before he gets there. Sit on the wall in plain sight;
make a post of yourself; keep still, and keep your
eyes open.[Pg 8]

Once, in just such a place, I had a rare chance to
watch him. It was on the summit of a great bare
hill. Down in the woods by a swamp, five or six
hounds were waking the winter echoes merrily on
a fresh trail. I was hoping for a sight of Reynard
when he appeared from nowhere, on a rock not fifty
yards away. There he lay, his nose between his
paws, listening with quiet interest to the uproar
below. Occasionally he raised his head as some
young dog scurried near, yelping maledictions upon
a perfect tangle of fox tracks, none of which went
anywhere. Suddenly he sat up straight, twisted his
head sideways, as a dog does when he sees the most
interesting thing of his life, dropped his tongue out
a bit, and looked intently. I looked too, and there,
just below, was old Roby, the best foxhound in a
dozen counties, creeping like a cat along the top
rail of a sheep-fence, now putting his nose down to
the wood, now throwing his head back for a great
howl of exultation.—It was all immensely entertaining;
and nobody seemed to be enjoying it more than
the fox.

One of the most fascinating bits of animal study is
to begin at the very beginning of fox education, i.e.,
to find a fox den, and go there some afternoon in
early June, and hide at a distance, where you can
watch the entrance through your field-glass. Every[Pg 9]
afternoon the young foxes come out to play in the
sunshine like so many kittens. Bright little bundles
of yellow fur they seem, full of tricks and whims,
with pointed faces that change only from exclamation
to interrogation points, and back again. For
hours at a stretch they roll about, and chase tails,
and pounce upon the quiet old mother with fierce
little barks. One climbs laboriously up the rock
behind the den, and sits on his tail, gravely surveying
the great landscape with a comical little air of importance,
as if he owned it all. When called to come
down he is afraid, and makes a great to-do about it.
Another has been crouching for five minutes behind
a tuft of grass, watching like a cat at a rat-hole for
some one to come by and be pounced upon. Another
is worrying something on the ground, a cricket perhaps,
or a doodle-bug; and the fourth never ceases
to worry the patient old mother, till she moves away
and lies down by herself in the shadow of a ground
cedar.

As the afternoon wears away, and long shadows
come creeping up the hillside, the mother rises suddenly
and goes back to the den; the little ones stop
their play, and gather about her. You strain your
ears for the slightest sound, but hear nothing; yet
there she is, plainly talking to them; and they are
listening. She turns her head, and the cubs scamper[Pg 10]
into the den’s mouth. A moment she stands listening,
looking; while just within the dark entrance
you get glimpses of four pointed black noses, and a
cluster of bright little eyes, wide open for a last look.
Then she trots away, planning her hunt, till she disappears
down by the brook. When she is gone, eyes
and noses draw back; only a dark silent hole in the
bank is left. You will not see them again—not
unless you stay to watch by moonlight till mother-fox
comes back, with a fringe of field-mice hanging
from her lips, or a young turkey thrown across her
shoulders.

One shrewd thing frequently noticed in the conduct
of an old fox with young is that she never
troubles the poultry of the farms nearest her den.
She will forage for miles in every direction; will
harass the chickens of distant farms till scarcely a
handful remains of those that wander into the woods,
or sleep in the open yards; yet she will pass by and
through nearer farms without turning aside to hunt,
except for mice and frogs; and, even when hungry,
will note a flock of chickens within sight of her den,
and leave them undisturbed. She seems to know
perfectly that a few missing chickens will lead to a
search; that boys’ eyes will speedily find her den,
and boys’ hands dig eagerly for a litter of young
foxes.[Pg 11]

Last summer I found a den, beautifully hidden,
within a few hundred yards of an old farmhouse.
The farmer assured me he had never missed a
chicken; he had no idea that there was a fox
within miles of his large flock. Three miles away
was another farmer who frequently sat up nights,
and set his boys to watching afternoons, to shoot a
fox that, early and late, had taken nearly thirty young
chickens. Driven to exasperation at last, he borrowed
a hound from a hunter; and the dog ran the
trail straight to the den I had discovered.

Curiously enough, the cubs, for whose peaceful
bringing up the mother so cunningly provides, do
not imitate her caution. They begin their hunting
by lying in ambush about the nearest farm; the
first stray chicken they see is game. Once they
begin to plunder in this way, and feed full on their
own hunting, parental authority is gone; the mother
deserts the den immediately, leading the cubs far
away. But some of them go back, contrary to all
advice, and pay the penalty. She knows now that
sooner or later some cub will be caught stealing
chickens in broad daylight, and be chased by dogs.
The foolish youngster takes to earth, instead of trusting
to his legs; so the long-concealed den is discovered
and dug open at last.

When an old fox, foraging for her young some[Pg 12]
night, discovers by her keen nose that a flock of hens
has been straying near the woods, she goes next
day and hides herself there, lying motionless for
hours at a stretch in a clump of dead grass or berry
bushes, till the flock comes near enough for a rush.
Then she hurls herself among them, and in the confusion
seizes one by the neck, throws it by a quick
twist across her shoulders, and is gone before the
stupid hens find out what it is all about.

But when a fox finds an old hen or turkey straying
about with a brood of chicks, then the tactics are
altogether different. Creeping up like a cat, the fox
watches an opportunity to seize a chick out of sight
of the mother bird. That done, he withdraws, silent
as a shadow, his grip on the chick’s neck preventing
any outcry. Hiding his game at a distance, he creeps
back to capture another in the same way; and so on
till he has enough, or till he is discovered, or some
half-strangled chick finds breath enough for a squawk.
A hen or turkey knows the danger by instinct, and
hurries her brood into the open at the first suspicion
that a fox is watching.

A farmer, whom I know well, first told me how a
fox manages to carry a number of chicks at once.
He heard a clamor from a hen-turkey and her brood
one day, and ran to a wood path in time to see a
vixen make off with a turkey chick scarcely larger[Pg 13]
than a robin. Several were missing from the brood.
He hunted about, and presently found five more just
killed. They were beautifully laid out, the bodies at
a broad angle, the necks crossing each other, like the
corner of a corn-cob house, in such a way that, by
gripping the necks at the angle, all the chicks could
be carried at once, half hanging at either side of the
fox’s mouth. Since then I have seen an old fox with
what looked like a dozen or more field-mice carried
in this way; only, of course, the tails were crossed
corn-cob fashion instead of the necks.

The stealthiness with which a fox stalks his game
is one of the most remarkable things about him.
Stupid chickens are not the only birds captured.
Once I read in the snow the story of his hunt after
a crow—wary game to be caught napping! The
tracks showed that quite a flock of crows had been
walking about an old field, bordered by pine and
birch thickets. From the rock where he was sleeping
away the afternoon the fox saw or heard them,
and crept down. How cautious he was about it!
Following the tracks, one could almost see him stealing
along from stone to bush, from bush to grass
clump, so low that his body pushed a deep trail in
the snow, till he reached the cover of a low pine on
the very edge of the field. There he crouched with
all four feet close together under him. Then a crow[Pg 14]
came by within ten feet of the ambush. The tracks
showed that the bird was a bit suspicious; he
stopped often to look and listen. When his head was
turned aside for an instant the fox launched himself;
just two jumps, and he had him. Quick as he was,
the wing marks showed that the crow had started, and
was pulled down out of the air. Reynard carried
him into the densest thicket of scrub pines he could
find, and ate him there, doubtless to avoid the attacks
of the rest of the flock, which followed him screaming
vengeance.

A strong enmity exists between crows and foxes.
Wherever a crow finds a fox, he sets up a clatter that
draws a flock about him in no time, in great excitement.
They chase the fox as long as he is in sight,
cawing vociferously, till he creeps into a thicket of
scrub pines, into which no crow will ever venture,
and lies down till he tires out their patience. In
hunting, one may frequently trace the exact course
of a fox which the dogs are driving, by the crows
clamoring over him. Here in the snow was a record
that may help explain one side of the feud.

From the same white page one may read many
other stories of Reynard’s ways and doings. Indeed
I know of no more interesting winter walk than an
afternoon spent on his last night’s trail through the
soft snow. There is always something new, either in[Pg 15]
the track or the woods through which it leads;
always a fresh hunting story; always a disappointment
or two, a long cold wait for a rabbit that didn’t
come, or a miscalculation over the length of the snow
tunnel where a partridge burrowed for the night.
Generally, if you follow far enough, there is also a
story of good hunting which leaves you wavering
between congratulation over a successful stalk after
nights of hungry, patient wandering, and pity for the
little tragedy told so vividly by converging trails, a few
red drops in the snow, a bit of fur blown about by the
wind, or a feather clinging listlessly to the underbrush.
In such a tramp one learns much of fox-ways and other
ways that can never be learned elsewhere.

The fox whose life has been spent on the hillsides
surrounding a New England village seems to have
profited by generations of experience. He is much
more cunning every way than the fox of the wilderness.
If, for instance, a fox has been stealing your
chickens, your trap must be very cunningly set if you
are to catch him. It will not do to set it near the
chickens; no inducement will be great enough to
bring him within yards of it. It must be set well
back in the woods, near one of his regular hunting
grounds. Before that, however, you must bait the[Pg 16]
fox with choice bits scattered over a pile of dry
leaves or chaff, sometimes for a week, sometimes for
a month, till he comes regularly. Then smoke your
trap, or scent it; handle it only with gloves; set it in
the chaff; scatter bait as usual; and you have one
chance of getting him, while he has still a dozen of
getting away. In the wilderness, on the other hand,
he may be caught with half the precaution. I know
a little fellow, whose home is far back from the settlements,
who catches five or six foxes every winter by
ordinary wire snares set in the rabbit paths, where
foxes love to hunt.

In the wilderness one often finds tracks in the
snow, telling how a fox tried to catch a partridge
and only succeeded in frightening it into a tree.
After watching a while hungrily,—one can almost
see him licking his chops under the tree,—he trots
off to other hunting grounds. If he were an educated
fox he would know better than that.

When an old New England fox in some of his
nightly prowlings discovers a flock of chickens roosting
in the orchard, he generally gets one or two.
His plan is to come by moonlight, or else just at
dusk, and, running about under the tree, bark sharply
to attract the chickens’ attention. If near the house,
he does this by jumping, lest the dog or the farmer
hear his barking. Once they have begun to flutter[Pg 17]
and cackle, as they always do when disturbed, he
begins to circle the tree slowly, still jumping and
clacking his teeth. The chickens crane their necks
down to follow him. Faster and faster he goes,
racing in small circles, till some foolish fowl grows
dizzy with twisting her head, or loses her balance and
tumbles down, only to be snapped up and carried off
across his shoulders in a twinkling.

But there is one way in which fox of the wilderness
and fox of the town are alike easily deceived. Both
are very fond of mice, and respond quickly to the
squeak, which can be imitated perfectly by drawing
the breath in sharply between closed lips. The next
thing, after that is learned, is to find a spot in which
to try the effect.

Two or three miles back from almost all New England
towns are certain old pastures and clearings,
long since run wild, in which the young foxes love to
meet and play on moonlight nights, much as rabbits
do, though in a less harum-scarum way. When well
fed, and therefore in no hurry to hunt, the heart of a
young fox turns naturally to such a spot, and to fun
and capers. The playground may easily be found by
following the tracks after the first snowfall. (The
knowledge will not profit you probably till next
season; but it is worth finding and remembering.)
If one goes to the place on some still, bright night in[Pg 18]
autumn, and hides on the edge of the open, he stands
a good chance of seeing two or three foxes playing
there. Only he must himself be still as the night;
else, should twenty foxes come that way, he will
never see one.

It is always a pretty scene, the quiet opening in
the woods flecked with soft gray shadows in the
moonlight, the dark sentinel evergreens keeping
silent watch about the place, the wild little creatures
playing about among the junipers, flitting through
light and shadow, jumping over each other and tumbling
about in mimic warfare, all unconscious of a
spectator as the foxes that played there before the
white man came, and before the Indians. Such
scenes do not crowd themselves upon one. He must
wait long, and love the woods, and be often disappointed;
but when they come at last, they are worth
all the love and the watching. And when the foxes
are not there, there is always something else that is
beautiful.—

Now squeak like a mouse, in the midst of the play.
Instantly the fox nearest you stands, with one foot up,
listening. Another squeak, and he makes three or
four swift bounds in your direction, only to stand
listening again; he hasn’t quite located you. Careful
now! don’t hurry; the longer you keep him waiting,
the more certainly he is deceived. Another[Pg 19]
squeak; some more swift jumps that bring him within
ten feet; and now he smells or sees you, sitting motionless
on your boulder in the shadow of the pines.

He isn’t surprised; at least he pretends he isn’t;
but looks you over indifferently, as if he were used to
finding people sitting on that particular rock. Then
he trots off with an air of having forgotten something.
With all his cunning he never suspects you of being
the mouse. That little creature he believes to be
hiding under the rock; and to-morrow night he will
very likely take a look there, or respond to your
squeak in the same way.

It is only early in the season, generally before the
snow blows, that one can see them playing; and
it is probably the young foxes that are so eager for
this kind of fun. Later in the season—either because
the cubs have lost their playfulness, or because they
must hunt so diligently for enough to eat that there
is no time for play—they seldom do more than take
a gallop together, with a playful jump or two, before
going their separate ways. At all times, however,
they have a strong tendency to fun and mischief-making.
More than once, in winter, I have surprised
a fox flying round after his own bushy tail so
rapidly that tail and fox together looked like a great
yellow pin-wheel on the snow.

When a fox meets a toad or frog, and is not hungry,[Pg 20]
he worries the poor thing for an hour at a time; and
when he finds a turtle he turns the creature over with
his paw, sitting down gravely to watch its awkward
struggle to get back onto its feet. At such times he
has a most humorous expression, brows wrinkled and
tongue out, as if he were enjoying himself hugely.

Later in the season he would be glad enough to
make a meal of toad or turtle. One day last March
the sun shone out bright and warm; in the afternoon
the first frogs began to tune up, cr-r-r-runk, cr-r-runk-a-runk-runk,
like a flock of brant in the distance. I
was watching them at a marshy spot in the woods,
where they had come out of the mud by dozens into
a bit of open water, when the bushes parted cautiously
and the sharp nose of a fox appeared. The
hungry fellow had heard them from the hill above,
where he was asleep, and had come down to see if he
could catch a few. He was creeping out onto the ice
when he smelled me, and trotted back into the woods.

Once I saw him catch a frog. He crept down to
where Chigwooltz, a fat green bullfrog, was sunning
himself by a lily pad, and very cautiously stretched
out one paw under water. Then with a quick fling
he tossed his game to land, and was after him like a
flash before he could scramble back.

On the seacoast Reynard depends largely on the
tides for a living. An old fisherman assures me that[Pg 21]
he has seen him catching crabs there in a very novel
way. Finding a quiet bit of water where the crabs
are swimming about, he trails his brush over the surface
till one rises and seizes it with his claw (a most
natural thing for a crab to do), whereupon the fox
springs away, jerking the crab to land. Though a
fox ordinarily is careful as a cat about wetting his
tail or feet, I shall not be surprised to find some day
for myself that the fisherman was right. Reynard is
very ingenious, and never lets his little prejudices
stand in the way when he is after a dinner.

His way of beguiling a duck is more remarkable
than his fishing. Late one afternoon, while following
the shore of a pond, I noticed a commotion among
some tame ducks, and stopped to see what it was about.
They were swimming in circles, quacking and stretching
their wings, evidently in great excitement. A few
minutes’ watching convinced me that something on
the shore excited them. Their heads were straight
up from the water, looking fixedly at something that
I could not see; every circle brought them nearer
the bank. I walked towards them, not very cautiously,
I am sorry to say; for the farmhouse where
the ducks belonged was in plain sight, and I was not
expecting anything unusual. As I glanced over the
bank something slipped out of sight into the tall
grass. I followed the waving tops intently, and[Pg 22]
caught one sure glimpse of a fox as he disappeared
into the woods.

The thing puzzled me for years, though I suspected
some foxy trick, till a duck-hunter explained to me
what Reynard was doing. He had seen it tried successfully
once on a flock of wild ducks.—

When a fox finds a flock of ducks feeding near
shore, he trots down and begins to play on the beach
in plain sight, watching the birds the while out of the
“tail o’ his ee,” as a Scotchman would say. Ducks
are full of curiosity, especially about unusual colors
and objects too small to frighten them; so the playing
animal speedily excites a lively interest. They
stop feeding, gather close together, spread, circle, come
together again, stretching their necks as straight as
strings to look and listen.

Then the fox really begins his performance. He
jumps high to snap at imaginary flies; he chases his
bushy tail; he rolls over and over in clouds of flying
sand; he gallops up the shore, and back like a whirlwind;
he plays peekaboo with every bush. The foolish
birds grow excited; they swim in smaller circles,
quacking nervously, drawing nearer and nearer to get
a better look at the strange performance. They are
long in coming, but curiosity always gets the better
of them; those in the rear crowd the front rank forward.
All the while the show goes on, the performer[Pg 23]
paying not the slightest attention apparently to his
excited audience; only he draws slowly back from the
water’s edge, as if to give them room as they crowd
nearer.

They are on shore at last; then, while they are lost
in the most astonishing caper of all, the fox dashes
among them, throwing them into the wildest confusion.
His first snap never fails to throw a duck back onto
the sand with a broken neck; and he has generally time
for a second, often for a third, before the flock escapes
into deep water. Then he buries all his birds but
one, throws that across his shoulders, and trots off,
wagging his head, to some quiet spot where he can
eat his dinner and take a good nap undisturbed.

When with all his cunning Reynard is caught napping,
he makes use of another good trick he knows.
One winter morning some years ago, my friend, the
old fox-hunter, rose at daylight for a run with the
dogs over the new-fallen snow. Just before calling
his hounds, he went to his hen-house, some distance
away, to throw the chickens some corn for the day.
As he reached the roost, his steps making no sound
in the snow, he noticed the trail of a fox crossing the
yard and entering the coop through a low opening
sometimes used by the chickens. No trail came out;
it flashed upon him that the fox must be inside at
that moment.[Pg 24]

Hardly had he reached this conclusion when a
wild cackle arose that left no doubt about it. On
the instant he whirled an empty box against the opening,
at the same time pounding lustily to frighten
the thief from killing more chickens. Reynard was
trapped sure enough. The fox-hunter listened at the
door, but save for an occasional surprised cut-aa-cut,
not a sound was heard within.

Very cautiously he opened the door and squeezed
through. There lay a fine pullet stone dead; just
beyond lay the fox, dead too.

“Well, of all things,” said the fox-hunter, open-mouthed,
“if he hasn’t gone and climbed the roost
after that pullet, and then tumbled down and broken
his own neck!”

Highly elated with this unusual beginning of his
hunt, he picked up the fox and the pullet and laid
them down together on the box outside, while he fed
his chickens.

When he came out, a minute later, there was the
box and a feather or two, but no fox and no pullet.
Deep tracks led out of the yard and up over the hill
in flying jumps. Then it dawned upon our hunter
that Reynard had played the possum-game on him,
getting away with a whole skin and a good dinner.

There was no need to look farther for a good fox
track. Soon the music of the hounds went ringing[Pg 25]
over the hill and down the hollow; but though the
dogs ran true, and the hunter watched the runways
all day with something more than his usual interest,
he got no glimpse of the wily old fox. Late at night
the dogs came limping home, weary and footsore, but
with never a long yellow hair clinging to their chops
to tell a story.

The fox saved his pullet, of course. Finding himself
pursued, he buried it hastily, and came back the
next night undoubtedly to get it.

Several times since then I have known of his playing
possum in the same way. The little fellow whom
I mentioned as living near the wilderness, and snaring
foxes, once caught a black fox—a rare, beautiful
animal with a very valuable skin—in a trap which
he had baited for weeks in a wild pasture. It was
the first black fox he had ever seen, and, boylike, he
took it only as a matter of mild wonder to find the
beautiful creature frozen stiff, apparently, on his pile
of chaff with one hind leg fast in the trap.

He carried the prize home, trap and all, over his
shoulder. At his whoop of exultation the whole family
came out to admire and congratulate. At last he
took the trap from the fox’s leg, and stretched him
out on the doorstep to gloat over the treasure and
stroke the glossy fur to his heart’s content. His
attention was taken away for a moment; then he had[Pg 26]
a dazed vision of a flying black animal that seemed
to perch an instant on the log fence and vanish
among the spruces.

Poor Johnnie! There were tears in his eyes when
he told me about it, three years afterwards.

These are but the beginning of fox-ways. I have
not spoken of his occasional tree climbing; nor of his
grasshopper hunting; nor of his planning to catch
three quails at once when he finds a whole covey
gathered into a dinner-plate circle, tails in, heads out,
asleep on the ground; nor of some perfectly astonishing
things he does when hard pressed by dogs. But
these are enough to begin the study and still leave
plenty of things to find out for one’s self. Reynard is
rarely seen, even in places where he abounds; we
know almost nothing of his private life; and there
are undoubtedly many of his most interesting ways
yet to be discovered. He has somehow acquired a
bad name, especially among farmers; but, on the
whole, there is scarcely a wild thing in the woods
that better repays one for the long hours spent in
catching a glimpse of him.

[Pg 27]

II. MERGANSER.

Shelldrake, or shellbird, is the
name by which this duck is generally
known, though how he came to
be called so would be hard to tell.
Probably the name was given by
gunners, who see him only in
winter when hunger drives him
to eat mussels—but even then
he likes mud-snails much better.

The name fish-duck, which one hears occasionally, is
much more appropriate. The long slender bill, with
its serrated edges fitting into each other like the teeth
of a bear trap, just calculated to seize and hold a slimy
wriggling fish, is quite enough evidence as to the
nature of the bird’s food, even if one had not seen
him fishing on the lakes and rivers which are his
summer home.

That same bill, by the way, is sometimes a source
of danger. Once, on the coast, I saw a shelldrake
tying in vain to fly against the wind, which flung
rudely among some tall reeds near me. The[Pg 28]
next moment Don, my old dog, had him. In a hungry
moment he had driven his bill through both shells of
a scallop, which slipped or worked its way up to his
nostrils, muzzling the bird perfectly with a hard shell
ring. The poor fellow by desperate trying could open
his mouth barely wide enough to drink or to swallow
the tiniest morsel. He must have been in this condition
a long time, for the bill was half worn through,
and he was so light that the wind blew him about like
a great feather when he attempted to fly.

Fortunately Don was a good retriever and had
brought the duck in with scarcely a quill ruffled; so
I had the satisfaction of breaking his bands and letting
him go free with a splendid rush. But the wind
was too much for him; he dropped back into the
water and went skittering down the harbor like a lady
with too much skirt and too big a hat in boisterous
weather. Meanwhile Don lay on the sand, head up,
ears up, whining eagerly for the word to fetch. Then
he dropped his head, and drew a long breath, and
tried to puzzle it out why a man should go out on a
freezing day in February, and tramp, and row, and
get wet to find a bird, only to let him go after he had
been fairly caught.

Kwaseekho the shelldrake leads a double life. In
winter he may be found almost anywhere along the
Massachusetts coast and southward, where he leads a[Pg 29]
dog’s life of it, notwithstanding his gay appearance.
An hundred guns are roaring at him wherever he
goes. From daylight to dark he has never a minute
to eat his bit of fish, or to take a wink of sleep in
peace. He flies to the ocean, and beds with his fellows
on the broad open shoals for safety. But the
east winds blow; and the shoals are a yeasty mass
of tumbling breakers. They buffet him about; they
twist his gay feathers; they dampen his pinions, spite
of his skill in swimming. Then he goes to the creeks
and harbors.

Along the shore a flock of his own kind, apparently,
are feeding in quiet water. Straight in he comes with
unsuspecting soul, the morning light shining full on
his white breast and bright red feet as he steadies
himself to take the water. But bang, bang! go the
guns; and splash, splash! fall his companions; and
out of a heap of seaweed come a man and a dog;
and away he goes, sadly puzzled at the painted
things in the water, to think it all over in hunger
and sorrow.

Then the weather grows cold, and a freeze-up
covers all his feeding grounds. Under his beautiful
feathers the bones project to spoil the contour of his
round plump body. He is famished now; he watches
the gulls to see what they eat. When he finds out, he
forgets his caution, and roams about after stray [Pg 30]mussels
on the beach. In the spring hunger drives him
into the ponds where food is plenty—but such food!
In a week his flesh is so strong that a crow would
hardly eat it. Altogether, it is small wonder that as
soon as his instinct tells him the streams of the
North are open and the trout running up, he is off
to a land of happier memories.

In summer he forgets his hardships. His life is
peaceful as a meadow brook. His home is the wilderness—on
a lonely lake, it may be, shimmering under
the summer sun, or kissed into a thousand smiling
ripples by the south wind. Or perhaps it is a forest
river, winding on by wooded hills and grassy points
and lonely cedar swamps. In secret shallow bays the
young broods are plashing about, learning to swim
and dive and hide in safety. The plunge of the fish-hawk
comes up from the pools. A noisy kingfisher
rattles about from tree to stump, like a restless busy-body.
The hum of insects fills the air with a drowsy
murmur. Now a deer steps daintily down the point,
and looks, and listens, and drinks. A great moose
wades awkwardly out to plunge his head under and
pull away at the lily roots. But the young brood
mind not these harmless things. Sometimes indeed,
as the afternoon wears away, they turn their little
heads apprehensively as the alders crash and sway on
the bank above; a low cluck from the mother bird[Pg 31]
sends them all off into the grass to hide. How
quickly they have disappeared, leaving never a trace!
But it is only a bear come down from the ridge where
he has been sleeping, to find a dead fish perchance for
his supper; and the little brood seem to laugh as
another low cluck brings them scurrying back from
their hiding places.

Once, perhaps, comes a real fright, when all their
summer’s practice is put to the test. An unusual
noise is heard; and round the bend glides a bark
canoe with sound of human voices. Away go the
brood together, the river behind them foaming like
the wake of a tiny steamer as the swift-moving feet
lift them almost out of water. Visions of ocean, the
guns, falling birds, and the hard winter distract the
poor mother. She flutters wildly about the brood,
now leading, now bravely facing the monster; now
pushing along some weak little loiterer, now floundering
near the canoe as if wounded, to attract attention
from the young. But they double the point at last,
and hide away under the alders. The canoe glides
by and makes no effort to find them. Silence is again
over the forest. The little brood come back to the
shallows, with mother bird fluttering round them to
count again and again lest any be missing. The
kingfisher comes out of his hole in the bank. The river
flows on as before, and peace returns; and over all is[Pg 32]
the mystic charm of the wilderness and the quiet of a
summer day.

This is the way it all looks and seems to me, sitting
over under the big hemlock, out of sight, and watching
the birds through my field-glass.

Day after day I have attended such little schools
unseen and unsuspected by the mother bird. Sometimes
it was the a-b-c class, wee little downy fellows,
learning to hide on a lily pad, and never getting a
reward of merit in the shape of a young trout till they
hid so well that the teacher (somewhat over-critical, I
thought) was satisfied. Sometimes it was the baccalaureates
that displayed their talents to the unbidden
visitor, flashing out of sight, cutting through the water
like a ray of light, striking a young trout on the bottom
with the rapidity and certainty almost of the teacher.
It was marvelous, the diving and swimming; and
mother bird looked on and quacked her approval of
the young graduates.—That is another peculiarity:
the birds are dumb in winter; they find their voice
only for the young.

While all this careful training is going on at home,
the drake is off on the lakes somewhere with his boon
companions, having a good time, and utterly neglectful
of parental responsibility. Sometimes I have
found clubs of five or six, gay fellows all, living by
themselves at one end of a big lake where the fishing
[Pg 33]was good. All summer long they roam and gad
about, free from care, and happy as summer campers,
leaving mother birds meanwhile to feed and educate
their offspring. Once only have I seen a drake sharing
the responsibilities of his family. I watched
three days to find the cause of his devotion; but he
disappeared the third evening, and I never saw him
again. Whether the drakes are lazy and run away,
or whether they have the atrocious habit of many
male birds and animals of destroying their young,
and so are driven away by the females, I have not
been able to find out.

These birds are very destructive on the trout
streams; if a summer camper spare them, it is
because of his interest in the young, and especially
because of the mother bird’s devotion. When the
recreant drake is met with, however, he goes promptly
onto the bill of fare, with other good things.

Occasionally one overtakes a brood on a rapid
river. Then the poor birds are distressed indeed.
At the first glimpse of the canoe they are off, churning
the water into foam in their flight. Not till they
are out of sight round the bend do they hear the cluck
that tells them to hide. Some are slow in finding
a hiding place on the strange waters. The mother
bird hurries them. They are hunting in frantic haste
when round the bend comes the swift-gliding canoe.[Pg 34]
With a note of alarm they are all off again, for she
will not leave even the weakest alone. Again they
double the bend and try to hide; again the canoe
overtakes them; and so on, mile after mile, till a
stream or bogan flowing into the river offers a road
to escape. Then, like a flash, the little ones run in
under shelter of the banks, and glide up stream noiselessly,
while mother bird flutters on down the river
just ahead of the canoe. Having lured it away to a
safe distance, as she thinks, she takes wing and
returns to the young.

Their powers of endurance are remarkable. Once,
on the Restigouche, we started a brood of little ones
late in the afternoon. We were moving along in a
good current, looking for a camping ground, and had
little thought for the birds, which could never get far
enough ahead to hide securely. For five miles they
kept ahead of us, rushing out at each successive
stretch of water, and fairly distancing us in a straight
run. When we camped they were still below us.
At dusk I was sitting motionless near the river
when a slight movement over near the opposite bank
attracted me. There was the mother bird, stealing
along up stream under the fringe of bushes. The
young followed in single file. There was no splashing
of water now. Shadows were not more noiseless.

Twice since then I have seen them do the same[Pg 35]
thing. I have no doubt they returned that evening
all the way up to the feeding grounds where we first
started them; for like the kingfishers every bird
seems to have his own piece of the stream. He never
fishes in his neighbor’s pools, nor will he suffer any
poaching in his own. On the Restigouche we found
a brood every few miles; on other rivers less plentifully
stocked with trout they are less numerous. On
lakes there is often a brood at either end; but though
I have watched them carefully, I have never seen
them cross to each other’s fishing grounds.

Once, up on the Big Toledi, I saw a curious bit
of their education. I was paddling across the lake
one day, when I saw a shellbird lead her brood into a
little bay where I knew the water was shallow; and
immediately they began dipping, though very awkwardly.
They were evidently taking their first lessons
in diving. The next afternoon I was near the same
place. I had done fishing—or rather, frogging—and
had pushed the canoe into some tall grass out of
sight, and was sitting there just doing nothing.

A musquash came by, and rubbed his nose against
the canoe, and nibbled a lily root before he noticed me.
A shoal of minnows were playing among the grasses
near by. A dragon-fly stood on his head against a
reed—a most difficult feat, I should think. He was
trying some contortion that I couldn’t make out,[Pg 36]
when a deer stepped down the bank and never saw
me. Doing nothing pays one under such circumstances,
if only by the glimpses it gives of animal life.
It is so rare to see a wild thing unconscious.

Then Kwaseekho came into the shallow bay again
with her brood, and immediately they began dipping
as before. I wondered how the mother made them
dive, till I looked through the field-glass and saw that
the little fellows occasionally brought up something
to eat. But there certainly were no fish to be caught
in that warm, shallow water. An idea struck me,
and I pushed the canoe out of the grass, sending the
brood across the lake in wild confusion. There on
the black bottom were a dozen young trout, all freshly
caught, and all with the air-bladder punctured by the
mother bird’s sharp bill. She had provided their
dinner, but she brought it to a good place and made
them dive to get it.

As I paddled back to camp, I thought of the way
the Indians taught their boys to shoot. They hung
their dinner from the trees, out of reach, and made
them cut the cord that held it, with an arrow. Did
the Indians originate this, I wonder, in their direct
way of looking at things, almost as simple as the
birds’? Or was the idea whispered to some Indian
hunter long ago, as he watched Merganser teach her
young to dive?[Pg 37]

Of all the broods I have met in the wilderness, only
one, I think, ever grew to recognize me and my canoe
a bit, so as to fear me less than another. It was on a
little lake in the heart of the woods, where we lingered
long on our journey, influenced partly by the beauty
of the place, and partly by the fact that two or three
bears roamed about there, which I sometimes met at
twilight on the lake shore. The brood were as wild
as other broods; but I met them often, and they
sometimes found the canoe lying motionless and
harmless near them, without quite knowing how it
came there. So after a few days they looked at me
with curiosity and uneasiness only, unless I came too
near.

There were six in the brood. Five were hardy
little fellows that made the water boil behind them
as they scurried across the lake. But the sixth was a
weakling. He had been hurt, by a hawk perhaps, or
a big trout, or a mink; or he had swallowed a bone;
or maybe he was just a weak little fellow with no
accounting for it. Whenever the brood were startled,
he struggled bravely a little while to keep up; then
he always fell behind. The mother would come back,
and urge, and help him; but it was of little use. He
was not strong enough; and the last glimpse I always
had of them was a foamy wake disappearing round a
distant point, while far in the rear was a ripple where[Pg 38]
the little fellow still paddled away, doing his best
pathetically.

One afternoon the canoe glided round a point and
ran almost up to the brood before they saw it, giving
them a terrible fright. Away they went on the instant,
putter, putter, putter, lifting themselves almost out
of water with the swift-moving feet and tiny wings.
The mother bird took wing, returned and crossed
the bow of the canoe, back and forth, with loud
quackings. The weakling was behind as usual; and
in a sudden spirit of curiosity or perversity—for
I really had a good deal of sympathy for the little[Pg 39]
fellow—I shot the canoe forward, almost up to him.
He tried to dive; got tangled in a lily stem in his
fright; came up, flashed under again; and I saw him
come up ten feet away in some grass, where he sat
motionless and almost invisible amid the pads and
yellow stems.

How frightened he was! Yet how still he sat!
Whenever I took my eyes from him a moment I
had to hunt again, sometimes two or three minutes,
before I could see him there.

Meanwhile the brood went almost to the opposite
shore before they stopped, and the mother, satisfied
at last by my quietness, flew over and lit among them.
She had not seen the little one. Through the glass
I saw her flutter round and round them, to be quite
sure they were all there. Then she missed him. I
could see it all in her movements. She must have
clucked, I think, for the young suddenly disappeared,
and she came swimming rapidly back over the way
they had come, looking, looking everywhere. Round
the canoe she went at a safe distance, searching
among the grass and lily pads, calling him softly to
come out. But he was very near the canoe, and very
much frightened; the only effect of her calls was
to make him crouch closer against the grass stems,
while the bright little eyes, grown large with fear,
were fastened on me.[Pg 40]

Slowly I backed the canoe away till it was out of
sight around the point, though I could still see the
mother bird through the bushes. She swam rapidly
about where the canoe had been, calling more loudly;
but the little fellow had lost confidence in her, or was
too frightened, and refused to show himself. At last
she discovered him, and with quacks and flutters that
looked to me a bit hysteric pulled him out of his
hiding place. How she fussed over him! How she
hurried and helped and praised and scolded him all
the way over; and fluttered on ahead, and clucked
the brood out of their hiding places to meet him!
Then, with all her young about her, she swept round
the point into the quiet bay that was their training
school.

And I, drifting slowly up the lake into the sunset
over the glassy water, was thinking how human it all
was. “Doth he not leave the ninety and nine in the
wilderness, and go after that which is lost, until he
find it?”

[Pg 41]

III. QUEER WAYS OF BR’ER RABBIT.

Br’er Rabbit is a funny fellow. No
wonder that Uncle Remus makes him
the hero of so many adventures! Uncle
Remus had watched him, no doubt, on
some moonlight night when he gathered
his boon companions together for a frolic. In the
heart of the woods it was, in a little opening where
the moonlight came streaming in through the pines,
making soft gray shadows for hide-and-seek, and
where no prowling fox ever dreamed of looking.

With most of us, I fear, the acquaintance with
Bunny is too limited for us to appreciate his frolicsome
ways and his happy, fun-loving disposition.
The tame things which we sometimes see about
country yards are often stupid, like a playful kitten
spoiled by too much handling; and the flying glimpse
we sometimes get of a bundle of brown fur, scurrying
helter-skelter through and over the huckleberry
bushes, generally leaves us staring in astonishment
at the swaying leaves where it disappeared, and
wondering curiously what it was all about. It was[Pg 42]
only a brown rabbit that you almost stepped upon
in your autumn walk through the woods.

Look under the crimson sumach yonder, there
in the bit of brown grass, with the purple asters
hanging over, and you will find his form, where
he has been sitting all the morning and where he
watched you all the way up the hill. But you need
not follow; you will not find him again. He never
runs straight; the swaying leaves there where he disappeared
mark the beginning of his turn, whether to
right or left you will never know. Now he has come
around his circle and is near you again—watching
you this minute, out of his bit of brown grass. As
you move slowly away in the direction he took, peering
here and there among the bushes, Bunny behind
you sits up straight in his old form again, with his
little paws held very prim, his long ears pointed
after you, and his deep brown eyes shining like the
waters of a hidden spring among the asters. And he
chuckles to himself, and thinks how he fooled you
that time, sure.

To see Br’er Rabbit at his best, that is, at his
own playful comical self, one must turn hunter, and
learn how to sit still, and be patient. Only you
must not hunt in the usual way; not by day, for then
Bunny is stowed away in his form on the sunny slope
of a southern hillside, where one’s eyes will never[Pg 43]
find him; not with gun and dog, for then the keen
interest and quick sympathy needed to appreciate
any phase of animal life gives place to the coarser
excitement of the hunt; and not by going about after
Bunny, for your heavy footsteps and the rustle of
leaves will only send him scurrying away into safer
solitudes. Find where he loves to meet with his
fellows, in quiet little openings in the woods. There
is no mistaking his playground when once you have
found it. Go there by moonlight and, sitting still in
the shadow, let your game find you, or pass by without
suspicion; for this is the best way to hunt, whether
one is after game or only a better knowledge of the
ways of bird and beast.

The very best spot I ever found for watching
Bunny’s ways was on the shore of a lonely lake in the
heart of a New Brunswick forest. I hardly think that
he was any different there, for I have seen some of his
pranks repeated within sight of a busy New England
town; but he was certainly more natural. He had
never seen a man before, and he was as curious about
it as a blue jay. No dog’s voice had ever wakened
the echoes within fifty miles; but every sound of the
wilderness he seemed to know a thousand times better
than I. The snapping of the smallest stick under
the stealthy tread of fox or wildcat would send him
scurrying out of sight in wild alarm; yet I watched a[Pg 44]
dozen of them at play one night when a frightened
moose went crashing through the underbrush and
plunged into the lake near by, and they did not seem
to mind it in the least.

The spot referred to was the only camping ground
on the lake; so Simmo, my Indian guide, assured
me; and he knew very well. I discovered afterward
that it was the only cleared bit of land for miles
around; and this the rabbits knew very well. Right
in the midst of their best playground I pitched
my tent, while Simmo built his lean-to near by, in
another little opening. We were tired that night,
after a long day’s paddle in the sunshine on the river.
The after-supper chat before the camp fire—generally
the most delightful bit of the whole day, and
prolonged as far as possible—was short and sleepy;
and we left the lonely woods to the bats and owls
and creeping things, and turned in for the night.

I was just asleep when I was startled by a loud
thump twice repeated, as if a man stamped on the
ground, or, as I thought at the time, just like the
thump a bear gives an old log with his paw, to see if
it is hollow and contains any insects. I was wide
awake in a moment, sitting up straight to listen. A
few minutes passed by in intense stillness; then,
thump! thump! thump! just outside the tent among
the ferns.[Pg 45]

I crept slowly out; but beyond a slight rustle as
my head appeared outside the tent I heard nothing,
though I waited several minutes and searched about
among the underbrush. But no sooner was I back
in the tent and quiet than there it was again, and
repeated three or four times, now here, now there,
within the next ten minutes. I crept out again, with
no better success than before.

This time, however, I would find out about that
mysterious noise before going back. It isn’t so
pleasant to go to sleep until one knows what things
are prowling about, especially things that make a
noise like that. A new moon was shining down
into the little clearing, giving hardly enough light
to make out the outlines of the great evergreens.
Down among the ferns things were all black and uniform.
For ten minutes I stood there in the shadow
of a big spruce and waited. Then the silence was
broken by a sudden heavy thump in the bushes just
behind me. I was startled, and wheeled on the
instant; as I did so, some small animal scurried
away into the underbrush.

For a moment I was puzzled. Then it flashed
upon me that I was camped upon the rabbits’ playground.
With the thought came a strong suspicion
that Bunny was fooling me.

Going back to the fire, I raked the coals together[Pg 46]
and threw on some fresh fuel. Next I fastened a
large piece of birch bark on two split sticks behind
the fireplace; then I sat down on an old log to wait.
The rude reflector did very well as the fire burned up.
Out in front the fern tops were dimly lighted to the
edge of the clearing. As I watched, a dark form shot
suddenly above the ferns and dropped back again.
Three heavy thumps followed; then the form shot up
and down once more. This time there was no mistake.
In the firelight I saw plainly the dangle of
Br’er Rabbit’s long legs, and the flap of his big ears,
and the quick flash of his dark eyes in the reflected
light,—got an instantaneous photograph of him, as
it were, at the top of his comical jump.

I sat there nearly an hour before the why and the
how of the little joker’s actions became quite clear.
This is what happens in such a case. Bunny comes
down from the ridge for his nightly frolic in the little
clearing. While still in the ferns the big white
object, standing motionless in the middle of his playground,
catches his attention; and very much surprised,
and very much frightened, but still very
curious, he crouches down close to wait and listen.
But the strange thing does not move nor see him. To
get a better view he leaps up high above the ferns
two or three times. Still the big thing remains quite
still and harmless. “Now,” thinks Bunny, “I’ll[Pg 47]
frighten him, and find out what he is.” Leaping
high he strikes the ground sharply two or three
times with his padded hind foot; then jumps up
quickly again to see the effect of his scare. Once
he succeeded very well, when he crept up close
behind me, so close that he didn’t have to spring up
to see the effect. I fancy him chuckling to himself
as he scurried off after my sudden start.

That was the first time that I ever heard Bunny’s
challenge. It impressed me at the time as one of his
most curious pranks; the sound was so big and
heavy for such a little fellow. Since then I have
heard it frequently; and now sometimes when I
stand at night in the forest and hear a sudden heavy
thump in the underbrush, as if a big moose were
striking the ground and shaking his antlers at me,
it doesn’t startle me in the least. It is only Br’er
Rabbit trying to frighten me.

The next night Bunny played us another trick.
Before Simmo went to sleep he always took off his
blue overalls and put them under his head for a
pillow. That was only one of Simmo’s queer ways.
While he was asleep the rabbits came into his little
commoosie, dragged the overalls out from under his
head, and nibbled them full of holes. Not content
with this, they played with them all night; pulled
them around the clearing, as threads here and there[Pg 48]
plainly showed; then dragged them away into the
underbrush and left them.

Simmo’s wrath when he at last found the precious
garments was comical to behold; when he wore
them with their new polka-dot pattern, it was still
more comical. Why the rabbits did it I could never
quite make out. The overalls were very dirty, very
much stained with everything from a clean trout to
tobacco crumbs; and, as there was nothing about
them for a rabbit to eat, we concluded that it was
just one of Br’er Rabbit’s pranks. That night Simmo,
to avenge his overalls, set a deadfall supported by a
piece of cord, which he had soaked in molasses and
salt. Which meant that Bunny would nibble the cord
for the salt that was in it, and bring the log down
hard on his own back. So I had to spring it, while
Simmo slept, to save the little fellow’s life and learn
more about him.

Up on the ridge above our tent was a third tiny
clearing, where some trappers had once made their
winter camp. It was there that I watched the rabbits
one moonlight night from my seat on an old log, just
within the shadow at the edge of the opening. The
first arrival came in with a rush. There was a sudden
scurry behind me, and over the log he came with a
flying leap that landed him on the smooth bit of
ground in the middle, where he whirled around and[Pg 49]
around with grotesque jumps, like a kitten after its
tail. Only Br’er Rabbit’s tail was too short for him
ever to catch it; he seemed rather to be trying to get a
good look at it. Then he went off helter-skelter in
a headlong rush through the ferns. Before I knew
what had become of him, over the log he came again
in a marvelous jump, and went tearing around the
clearing like a circus horse, varying his performance
now by a high leap, now by two or three awkward
hops on his hind legs, like a dancing bear. It was
immensely entertaining.

The third time around he discovered me in the
midst of one of his antics. He was so surprised that
he fell down. In a second he was up again, sitting
up very straight on his haunches just in front of me,
paws crossed, ears erect, eyes shining in fear and
curiosity. “Who are you?” he was saying, as plainly
as ever rabbit said it. Without moving a muscle I
tried to tell him, and also that he need not be afraid.
Perhaps he began to understand, for he turned his
head on one side, just as a dog does when you talk to
him. But he wasn’t quite satisfied. “I’ll try my
scare on him,” he thought; and thump! thump!
thump! sounded his padded hind foot on the soft
ground. It almost made me start again, it sounded
so big in the dead stillness. This last test quite convinced
him that I was harmless, and, after a moment’s[Pg 50]
watching, away he went in some astonishing jumps
into the forest.

A few minutes passed by in quiet waiting before
he was back again, this time with two or three companions.
I have no doubt that he had been watching
me all the time, for I heard his challenge in the brush
just behind my log. The fun now began to grow
lively. Around and around they went, here, there,
everywhere,—the woods seemed full of rabbits, they
scurried around so. Every few minutes the number
increased, as some new arrival came flying in and
gyrated around like a brown fur pinwheel. They
leaped over everything in the clearing; they leaped
over each other as if playing leap-frog; they vied
with each other in the high jump. Sometimes they
gathered together in the middle of the open space
and crept about close to the ground, in and out and
roundabout, like a game of fox and geese. Then
they rose on their hind legs and hopped slowly
about in all the dignity of a minuet. Right in the
midst of the solemn affair some mischievous fellow
gave a squeak and a big jump; and away they all
went hurry-skurry, for all the world like a lot of boys
turned loose for recess. In a minute they were
back again, quiet and sedate, and solemn as bull-frogs.
Were they chasing and chastising the mischief-maker,
or was it only the overflow of abundant[Pg 51]
spirits as the top of a kettle blows off when the
pressure below becomes resistless?

Many of the rabbits saw me, I am sure, for they
sometimes gave a high jump over my foot; and one
came close up beside it, and sat up straight with his
head on one side, to look me over. Perhaps it was
the first comer, for he did not try his scare again.
Like most wild creatures, they have very little fear
of an object that remains motionless at their first
approach and challenge.

Once there was a curious performance over across
the clearing. I could not see it very plainly, but it
looked very much like a boxing match. A queer
sound, put-a-put-a-put-a-put, first drew my attention
to it. Two rabbits were at the edge of the ferns,
standing up on their hind legs, face to face, and
apparently cuffing each other soundly, while they
hopped slowly around and around in a circle. I
could not see the blows but only the boxing attitude,
and hear the sounds as they landed on each other’s
ribs. The other rabbits did not seem to mind it, as
they would have done had it been a fight, but stopped
occasionally to watch the two, and then went on
with their fun-making. Since then I have read of
tame hares that did the same thing, but I have never
seen it.

At another time the rabbits were gathered together[Pg 52]
in the very midst of some quiet fun, when they leaped
aside suddenly and disappeared among the ferns as if
by magic. The next instant a dark shadow swept
across the opening, almost into my face, and wheeled
out of sight among the evergreens. It was Kookoo-skoos,
the big brown owl, coursing the woods on his
nightly hunt after the very rabbits that were crouched
motionless beneath him as he passed. But how did
they learn, all at once, of the coming of an enemy
whose march is noiseless as the sweep of a shadow?
And did they all hide so well that he never suspected
that they were about, or did he see the ferns wave
as the last one disappeared, but was afraid to come
back after seeing me? Perhaps Br’er Rabbit was
well repaid that time for his confidence.

They soon came back again, as I think they would
not have done had it been a natural opening. Had
it been one of Nature’s own sunny spots, the owl
would have swept back and forth across it; for he
knows the rabbits’ ways as well as they know his.
But hawks and owls avoid a spot like this, that men
have cleared. If they cross it once in search of prey,
they seldom return. Wherever man camps, he leaves
something of himself behind; and the fierce birds
and beasts of the woods fear it, and shun it. It
is only the innocent things, singing birds, and fun-loving
rabbits, and harmless little wood-mice—shy,[Pg 53]
defenseless creatures all—that take possession of
man’s abandoned quarters, and enjoy his protection.
Bunny knows this, I think; and so there is no other
place in the woods that he loves so well as an old
camping ground.

The play was soon over; for it is only in the early
part of the evening, when Br’er Rabbit first comes
out after sitting still in his form all day, that he gives
himself up to fun, like a boy out of school. If one
may judge, however, from the looks of Simmo’s overalls,
and from the number of times he woke me by
scurrying around my tent, I suspect that he is never
too serious and never too busy for a joke. It is a
way he has of brightening the more sober times of
getting his own living, and keeping a sharp lookout
for cats and owls and prowling foxes.

Gradually the playground was deserted, as the
rabbits slipped off one by one to hunt their supper.
Now and then there was a scamper among the underbrush,
and a high jump or two, with which some
playful bunny enlivened his search for tender twigs;
and at times one, more curious than the rest, came
hopping along to sit erect a moment before the old
log, and look to see if the strange animal were still
there. But soon the old log was vacant too. Out
in the swamp a disappointed owl sat on his lonely
stub that lightning had blasted, and hooted that he[Pg 54]
was hungry. The moon looked down into the little
clearing with its waving ferns and soft gray shadows,
and saw nothing there to suggest that it was the
rabbits’ nursery.

Down at the camp a new surprise was awaiting me.
Br’er Rabbit was under the tent fly, tugging away at
the salt bag which I had left there carelessly after
curing a bearskin. While he was absorbed in getting
it out from under the rubber blanket, I crept up
on hands and knees, and stroked him once from ears
to tail. He jumped straight up with a startled squeak,
whirled in the air, and came down facing me. So
we remained for a full moment, our faces scarcely two
feet apart, looking into each other’s eyes. Then he
thumped the earth soundly with his left hind foot, to
show that he was not afraid, and scurried under the
fly and through the brakes in a half circle to a bush
at my heels, where he sat up straight in the shadow
to watch me.

But I had seen enough for one night. I left a
generous pinch of salt where he could find it easily,
and crept in to sleep, leaving him to his own ample
devices.

[Pg 55]

IV. A WILD DUCK.

The title will suggest to most boys a
line across the autumn sky at sunset,
with a bit of mystery about it; or else
a dark triangle moving southward,
high and swift, at Thanksgiving time.
To a few, who know well the woods
and fields about their homes, it may suggest a lonely
little pond, with a dark bird rising swiftly, far out of
reach, leaving the ripples playing among the sedges.
To those accustomed to look sharply it will suggest
five or six more birds, downy little fellows, hiding safe
among roots and grasses, so still that one seldom
suspects their presence. But the duck, like most
game birds, loves solitude; the details of his life he
keeps very closely to himself; and boys must be
content with occasional glimpses.

This is especially true of the dusky duck, more
generally known by the name black duck among
hunters. He is indeed a wild duck, so wild that
one must study him with a gun, and study him long
before he knows much about him. An ordinary[Pg 56]
tramp with a field-glass and eyes wide open may
give a rare, distant view of him; but only as one
follows him as a sportsman winter after winter, meeting
with much less of success than of discouragement,
does he pick up many details of his personal
life; for wildness is born in him, and no experience
with man is needed to develop it. On the lonely
lakes in the midst of a Canada forest, where he meets
man perhaps for the first time, he is the same as
when he builds at the head of some mill pond within
sight of a busy New England town. Other ducks
may in time be tamed and used as decoys; but not
so he. Several times I have tried it with wing-tipped
birds; but the result was always the same. They
worked night and day to escape, refusing all food
and even water till they broke through their pen, or
were dying of hunger, when I let them go.

One spring a farmer, with whom I sometimes go
shooting, determined to try with young birds. He
found a black duck’s nest in a dense swamp near a
salt creek, and hatched the eggs with some others
under a tame duck. Every time he approached the
pen the little things skulked away and hid; nor could
they be induced to show themselves, although their
tame companions were feeding and running about,
quite contented. After two weeks, when he thought
them somewhat accustomed to their surroundings, he[Pg 57]
let the whole brood go down to the shore just below
his house. The moment they were free the wild
birds scurried away into the water-grass out of sight,
and no amount of anxious quacking on the part of
the mother duck could bring them back into captivity.
He never saw them again.

This habit which the young birds have of skulking
away out of sight is a measure of protection that they
constantly practise. A brood may be seen on almost
any secluded pond or lake in New England, where
the birds come in the early spring to build their
nests. Watching from some hidden spot on the
shore, one sees them diving and swimming about,
hunting for food everywhere in the greatest freedom.
The next moment they scatter and disappear so suddenly
that one almost rubs his eyes to make sure that
the birds are really gone. If he is near enough, which
is not likely unless he is very careful, he has heard a
low cluck from the old bird, which now sits with neck
standing straight up out of the water, so still as to be
easily mistaken for one of the old stumps or bogs
among which they are feeding. She is looking about
to see if the ducklings are all well hidden. After a
moment there is another cluck, very much like the
other, and downy little fellows come bobbing out of
the grass, or from close beside the stumps where you
looked a moment before and saw nothing. This is[Pg 58]
repeated at frequent intervals, the object being, apparently,
to accustom the young birds to hide instantly
when danger approaches.

So watchful is the old bird, however, that trouble
rarely threatens without her knowledge. When the
young are well hidden at the first sign of the enemy,
she takes wing and leaves them, returning when danger
is over to find them still crouching motionless in
their hiding places. When surprised she acts like
other game birds,—flutters along with a great splashing,
trailing one wing as if wounded, till she has led
you away from the young, or occupied your attention
long enough for them to be safely hidden; then she
takes wing and leaves you.

The habit of hiding becomes so fixed with the
young birds that they trust to it long after the wings
have grown and they are able to escape by flight.
Sometimes in the early autumn I have run the bow of
my canoe almost over a full-grown bird, lying hidden
in a clump of grass, before he sprang into the air and
away. A month later, in the same place, the canoe
could hardly approach within a quarter of a mile
without his taking alarm.

Once they have learned to trust their wings, they
give up hiding for swift flight. But they never forget
their early training, and when wounded hide with a
cunning that is remarkable. Unless one has a good[Pg 59]
dog it is almost useless to look for a wounded duck,
if there is any cover to be reached. Hiding under a
bank, crawling into a muskrat hole, worming a way
under a bunch of dead grass or pile of leaves, swimming
around and around a clump of bushes just out
of sight of his pursuer, diving and coming up behind
a tuft of grass,—these are some of the ways by which
I have known a black duck try to escape. Twice
I have heard from old hunters of their finding a bird
clinging to a bunch of grass under water, though I
have never seen it. Once, from a blind, I saw a black
duck swim ashore and disappear into a small clump
of berry bushes. Karl, who was with me, ran over
to get him, but after a half-hour’s search gave it up.
Then I tried, and gave it up also. An hour later
we saw the bird come out of the very place where
we had been searching, and enter the water. Karl
ran out, shouting, and the bird hid in the bushes
again. Again we hunted the clump over and over,
but no duck could be seen. We were turning away
a second time when Karl cried: “Look!”—and there,
in plain sight, by the very white stone where I had
seen him disappear, was the duck, or rather the red
leg of a duck, sticking out of a tangle of black roots.

With the first sharp frost that threatens to ice over
the ponds in which they have passed the summer, the
inland birds betake themselves to the seacoast, where[Pg 60]
there is more or less migration all winter. The great
body of ducks moves slowly southward as the winter
grows severe; but if food is plenty they winter all
along the coast. It is then that they may be studied
to the best advantage.

During the daytime they are stowed away in quiet
little ponds and hiding places, or resting in large
flocks on the shoals well out of reach of land and danger.
When possible, they choose the former, because
it gives them an abundance of fresh water, which is a
daily necessity; and because, unlike the coots which
are often found in great numbers on the same shoals,
they dislike tossing about on the waves for any length
of time. But late in the autumn they desert the ponds
and are seldom seen there again until spring, even
though the ponds are open. They are very shy about
being frozen in or getting ice on their feathers, and
prefer to get their fresh water at the mouths of creeks
and springs.

With all their caution,—and they are very good
weather prophets, knowing the times of tides and
the approach of storms, as well as the days when
fresh water freezes,—they sometimes get caught.
Once I found a flock of five in great distress, frozen
into the thin ice while sleeping, no doubt, with heads
tucked under their wings. At another time I found
a single bird floundering about with a big lump of[Pg 61]
ice and mud attached to his tail. He had probably
found the insects plentiful in some bit of soft mud
at low tide, and stayed there too long with the thermometer
at zero.

Night is their feeding time; on the seacoast they fly
in to the feeding grounds just at dusk. Fog bewilders
them, and no bird likes to fly in rain, because
it makes the feathers heavy; so on foggy or rainy
afternoons they come in early, or not at all. The
favorite feeding ground is a salt marsh, with springs
and creeks of brackish water. Seeds, roots, tender
grasses, and snails and insects in the mud left by
the low tide are their usual winter food. When
these grow scarce they betake themselves to the mussel
beds with the coots; their flesh in consequence
becomes strong and fishy.

When the first birds come in to the feeding grounds
before dark, they do it with the greatest caution, examining
not only the little pond or creek, but the
whole neighborhood before lighting. The birds that
follow trust to the inspection of these first comers,
and generally fly straight in. For this reason it is
well for one who attempts to see them at this time
to have live decoys and, if possible, to have his blind
built several days in advance, in order that the birds
which may have been feeding in the place shall see
no unusual object when they come in. If the blind[Pg 62]
be newly built, only the stranger birds will fly straight
in to his decoys. Those that have been there before
will either turn away in alarm, or else examine the
blind very cautiously on all sides. If you know now
how to wait and sit perfectly still, the birds will at
last fly directly over the stand to look in. That is
your only chance; and you must take it quickly if
you expect to eat duck for dinner.

By moonlight one may sit on the bank in plain
sight of his decoys, and watch the wild birds as long
as he will. It is necessary only to sit perfectly still.
But this is unsatisfactory; you can never see just
what they are doing. Once I had thirty or forty close
about me in this way. A sudden turn of my head,
when a bat struck my cheek, sent them all off in a
panic to the open ocean.

A curious thing frequently noticed about these birds
as they come in at night is their power to make their
wings noisy or almost silent at will. Sometimes the
rustle is so slight that, unless the air is perfectly still,
it is scarcely audible; at other times it is a strong
wish-wish that can be heard two hundred yards away.
The only theory I can suggest is that it is done
as a kind of signal. In the daytime and on bright
evenings one seldom hears it; on dark nights it is
very frequent, and is always answered by the quacking
of birds already on the feeding grounds, probably[Pg 63]
to guide the incomers. How they do it is uncertain;
it is probably in some such way as the night-hawk
makes his curious booming sound,—not by means
of his open mouth, as is generally supposed, but by
slightly turning the wing quills so that the air sets
them vibrating. One can test this, if he will, by
blowing on any stiff feather.

On stormy days the birds, instead of resting on the
shoals, light near some lonely part of the beach and,
after watching carefully for an hour or two, to be
sure that no danger is near, swim ashore and collect
in great bunches in some sheltered spot under a
bank. It is indeed a tempting sight to see perhaps
a hundred of the splendid birds gathered close
together on the shore, the greater part with heads
tucked under their wings, fast asleep; but if you are
to surprise them, you must turn snake and crawl,
and learn patience. Scattered along the beach on
either side are single birds or small bunches evidently
acting as sentinels. The crows and gulls are
flying continually along the tide line after food; and
invariably as they pass over one of these bunches of
ducks they rise in the air to look around over all
the bank. You must be well hidden to escape those
bright eyes. The ducks understand crow and gull
talk perfectly, and trust largely to these friendly sentinels.
The gulls scream and the crows caw all day[Pg 64]
long, and not a duck takes his head from under
his wing; but the instant either crow or gull utters
his danger note every duck is in the air and headed
straight off shore.

The constant watchfulness of black ducks is perhaps
the most remarkable thing about them. When
feeding at night in some lonely marsh, or hidden away
by day deep in the heart of the swamps, they never
for a moment seem to lay aside their alertness, nor
trust to their hiding places alone for protection. Even
when lying fast asleep among the grasses with heads
tucked under their wings, there is a nervous vigilance
in their very attitudes which suggests a sense of danger.
Generally one has to content himself with studying
them through a glass; but once I had a very good
opportunity of watching them close at hand, of outwitting
them, as it were, at their own game of hide-and-seek.
It was in a grassy little pond, shut in by
high hills, on the open moors of Nantucket. The
pond was in the middle of a plain, perhaps a hundred
yards from the nearest hill. No tree or rock or bush
offered any concealment to an enemy; the ducks
could sleep there as sure of detecting the approach
of danger as if on the open ocean.

One autumn day I passed the place and, looking
cautiously over the top of a hill, saw a single black
duck swim out of the water-grass at the edge of the[Pg 65]
pond. The fresh breeze in my face induced me to
try to creep down close to the edge of the pond, to
see if it were possible to surprise birds there, should
I find any on my next hunting trip. Just below me,
at the foot of the hill, was a swampy run leading
toward the pond, with grass nearly a foot high growing
along its edge. I must reach that if possible.

After a few minutes of watching, the duck went
into the grass again, and I started to creep down the
hill, keeping my eyes intently on the pond. Halfway
down, another duck appeared, and I dropped flat on
the hillside in plain sight. Of course the duck noticed
the unusual object. There was a commotion in the
grass; heads came up here and there. The next moment,
to my great astonishment, fully fifty black ducks
were swimming about in the greatest uneasiness.

I lay very still and watched. Five minutes passed;
then quite suddenly all motion ceased in the pond;
every duck sat with neck standing straight up from
the water, looking directly at me. So still were they
that one could easily have mistaken them for stumps
or peat bogs. After a few minutes of this kind of
watching they seemed satisfied, and glided back, a
few at a time, into the grass.

When all were gone I rolled down the hill and
gained the run, getting soaking wet as I splashed into
it. Then it was easier to advance without being [Pg 66]discovered;
for whenever a duck came out to look round—which
happened almost every minute at first—I
could drop into the grass and be out of sight.

In half an hour I had gained the edge of a low
bank, well covered by coarse water-grass. Carefully
pushing this aside, I looked through, and almost held
my breath, they were so near. Just below me, within
six feet, was a big drake, with head drawn down so
close to his body that I wondered what he had done
with his neck. His eyes were closed; he was fast
asleep. In front of him were eight or ten more ducks
close together, all with heads under their wings. Scattered
about in the grass everywhere were small groups,
sleeping, or pluming their glossy dark feathers.

Beside the pleasure of watching them, the first black
ducks that I had ever seen unconscious, there was the
satisfaction of thinking how completely they had been
outwitted at their own game of sharp watching. How
they would have jumped had they only known what
was lying there in the grass so near their hiding place!
At first, every time I saw a pair of little black eyes
wink, or a head come from under a wing, I felt myself
shrinking close together in the thought that I was
discovered; but that wore off after a time, when I
found that the eyes winked rather sleepily, and the
necks were taken out just to stretch them, much as
one would take a comfortable yawn.[Pg 67]

Once I was caught squarely, but the grass and
my being so near saved me. I had raised my head
and lay with chin in my hands, deeply interested in
watching a young duck making a most elaborate
toilet, when from the other side an old bird shot
suddenly into the open water and saw me as I dropped
out of sight. There was a low, sharp quack which
brought every duck out of his hiding, wide awake on
the instant. At first they all bunched together at the
farther side, looking straight at the bank where I
lay. Probably they saw my feet, which were outside
the covert as I lay full length. Then they drew
gradually nearer till they were again within the fringe[Pg 68]
of water-grass. Some of them sat quite up on their
tails by a vigorous use of their wings, and stretched
their necks to look over the low bank. Just keeping
still saved me. In five minutes they were quiet again;
even the young duck seemed to have forgotten her
vanity and gone to sleep with the others.

Two or three hours I lay thus and watched them
through the grass, spying very rudely, no doubt, into
the seclusion of their home life. As the long shadow
of the western hill stretched across the pool till it
darkened the eastern bank, the ducks awoke one by
one from their nap, and began to stir about in preparation
for departure. Soon they were collected at the
center of the open water, where they sat for a moment
very still, heads up, and ready. If there was any signal
given I did not hear it. At the same moment
each pair of wings struck the water with a sharp
splash, and they shot straight up in that remarkable
way of theirs, as if thrown by a strong spring. An
instant they seemed to hang motionless in the air
high above the water, then they turned and disappeared
swiftly over the eastern hill toward the
marshes.

[Pg 69]

V. AN ORIOLE’S NEST.

How suggestive it is, swinging there
through sunlight and shadow from the
long drooping tips of the old elm
boughs! And what a delightful cradle
for the young orioles, swayed all day
long by every breath of the summer breeze,
peeping through chinks as the world sweeps
by, watching with bright eyes the boy below
who looks up in vain, or the mountain of hay that
brushes them in passing, and whistling cheerily, blow
high or low, with never a fear of falling! The mother
bird must feel very comfortable about it as she goes
off caterpillar hunting, for no bird enemy can trouble
the little ones while she is gone. The black snake,
that horror of all low-nesting birds, will never climb
so high. The red squirrel—little wretch that he is,
to eat young birds when he has still a bushel of corn
and nuts in his old wall—cannot find a footing on
those delicate branches. Neither can the crow find
a resting place from which to steal the young; and
the hawk’s legs are not long enough to reach down[Pg 70]
and grasp them, should he perchance venture near
the house and hover an instant over the nest.

Besides all this, the oriole is a neighborly little
body; and that helps her. Though the young are
kept from harm anywhere by the cunning instinct
which builds a hanging nest, she still prefers to build
near the house, where hawks and crows and owls
rarely come. She knows her friends and takes advantage
of their protection, returning year after year
to the same old elm, and, like a thrifty little housewife,
carefully saving and sorting the good threads of
her storm-wrecked old house to be used in building
the new.

Of late years, however, it has seemed to me that
the pretty nests on the secluded streets of New England
towns are growing scarcer. The orioles are
peace-loving birds, and dislike the society of those
noisy, pugnacious little rascals, the English sparrows,
which have of late taken possession of our streets.
Often now I find the nests far away from any house,
on lonely roads where a few years ago they were
rarely seen. Sometimes also a solitary farmhouse,
too far from the town to be much visited by sparrows,
has two or three nests swinging about it in
its old elms, where formerly there was but one.

It is an interesting evidence of the bird’s keen
instinct that where nests are built on lonely roads[Pg 71]
and away from houses they are noticeably deeper, and
so better protected from bird enemies. The same
thing is sometimes noticed of nests built in maple or
apple trees, which are without the protection of drooping
branches, upon which birds of prey can find no
footing. Some wise birds secure the same protection
by simply contracting the neck of the nest, instead of
building a deep one. Young birds building their first
nests seem afraid to trust in the strength of their own
weaving. Their nests are invariably shallow, and so
suffer most from birds of prey.

In the choice of building material the birds are
very careful. They know well that no branch supports
the nest from beneath; that the safety of the
young orioles depends on good, strong material well
woven together. In some wise way they seem to
know at a glance whether a thread is strong enough
to be trusted; but sometimes, in selecting the first
threads that are to bear the whole weight of the nest,
they are unwilling to trust to appearances. At such
times a pair of birds may be seen holding a little tug-of-war,
with feet braced, shaking and pulling the
thread like a pair of terriers, till it is well tested.

It is in gathering and testing the materials for a
nest that the orioles display no little ingenuity. One
day, a few years ago, I was lying under some shrubs,
watching a pair of the birds that were building close[Pg 72]
to the house. It was a typical nest-making day, the
sun pouring his bright rays through delicate green
leaves and a glory of white apple blossoms, the air
filled with warmth and fragrance, birds and bees busy
everywhere. Orioles seem always happy; to-day they
quite overflowed in the midst of all the brightness,
though materials were scarce and they must needs be
diligent.

The female was very industrious, never returning
to the nest without some contribution, while the male
frolicked about the trees in his brilliant orange and
black, whistling his warm rich notes, and seeming
like a dash of southern sunshine amidst the blossoms.
Sometimes he stopped in his frolic to find a bit of
string, over which he raised an impromptu jubilate,
or to fly with his mate to the nest, uttering that soft
rich twitter of his in a mixture of blarney and congratulation
whenever she found some particularly
choice material. But his chief part seemed to be to
furnish the celebration, while she took care of the
nest-making.

Out in front of me, under the lee of the old wall
whither some line-stripping gale had blown it, was
a torn fragment of cloth with loose threads showing
everywhere. I was wondering why the birds did not
utilize it, when the male, in one of his lively flights,
discovered it and flew down. First he hopped all[Pg 73]
around it; next he tried some threads; but, as the
cloth was lying loose on the grass, the whole piece
came whenever he pulled. For a few moments he
worked diligently, trying a pull on each side in succession.
Once he tumbled end over end in a comical
scramble, as the fragment caught on a grass stub but
gave way when he had braced himself and was pulling
hardest. Quite abruptly he flew off, and I thought
he had given up the attempt.

In a minute he was back with his mate, thinking,
no doubt, that she, as a capable little manager, would
know all about such things. If birds do not talk, they
have at least some very ingenious ways of letting one
another know what they think, which amounts to the
same thing.

The two worked together for some minutes, getting
an occasional thread, but not enough to pay for the
labor. The trouble was that both pulled together on
the same side; and so they merely dragged the bit
of cloth all over the lawn, instead of pulling out the
threads they wanted. Once they unraveled a long
thread by pulling at right angles, but the next
moment they were together on the same side again.
The male seemed to do, not as he was told, but
exactly what he saw his mate do. Whenever she
pulled at a thread, he hopped around, as close to
her as he could get, and pulled too.[Pg 74]

Twice they had given up the attempt, only to return
after hunting diligently elsewhere. Good material was
scarce that season. I was wondering how long their
patience would last, when the female suddenly seized
the cloth by a corner and flew along close to the[Pg 75]
ground, dragging it after her, chirping loudly the
while. She disappeared into a crab-apple tree in a
corner of the garden, whither the male followed her
a moment later.

Curious as to what they were doing, yet fearing to
disturb them, I waited where I was till I saw both
birds fly to the nest, each with some long threads.
This was repeated; and then curiosity got the better
of consideration. While the orioles were weaving the
last threads into their nest, I ran round the house,
crept a long way behind the old wall, and so to a safe
hiding place near the crab-apple.

The orioles had solved their problem; the bit of
cloth was fastened there securely among the thorns.
Soon the birds came back and, seizing some threads
by the ends, raveled them out without difficulty. It
was the work of but a moment to gather as much
material as they could use at one weaving. For an
hour or more I watched them working industriously
between the crab-apple and the old elm, where the
nest was growing rapidly to a beautiful depth. Several
times the bit of cloth slipped from the thorns as
the birds pulled upon it; but as often as it did they
carried it back and fastened it more securely, till at
last it grew so snarled that they could get no more
long threads, when they left it for good.

That same day I carried out some bright-colored[Pg 76]
bits of worsted and ribbon, and scattered them on
the grass. The birds soon found them and used
them in completing their nest. For a while a gayer
little dwelling was never seen in a tree. The bright
bits of color in the soft gray of the walls gave the
nest always a holiday appearance, in good keeping
with the high spirits of the orioles. But by the time
the young had chipped the shell, and the joyousness
of nest-building had given place to the constant duties
of filling hungry little mouths, the rains and the
sun of summer had bleached the bright colors to a
uniform sober gray.

That was a happy family from beginning to end.
No accident ever befell it; no enemy disturbed its
peace. And when the young birds had flown away
to the South, I took down the nest which I had helped
to build, and hung it in my study as a souvenir of
my bright little neighbors.

[Pg 77]

VI. THE BUILDERS.

A curious bit of wild life came to me
at dusk one day in the wilderness. It
was midwinter, and the snow lay deep.
I was sitting alone on a fallen
tree, waiting for the moon to rise
so that I could follow the faint
snowshoe track across a barren,
three miles, then through a mile
of forest to another trail that led
to camp. I had followed a caribou too far that day,
and this was the result—feeling along my own track
by moonlight, with the thermometer sinking rapidly
to the twenty-below-zero point.

There is scarcely any twilight in the woods; in ten
minutes it would be quite dark; and I was wishing
that I had blankets and an axe, so that I could camp
where I was, when a big gray shadow came stealing
towards me through the trees. It was a Canada lynx.
My fingers gripped the rifle hard, and the right mitten
seemed to slip off of itself as I caught the glare of his
fierce yellow eyes.[Pg 78]

But the eyes were not looking at me at all. Indeed,
he had not noticed me. He was stealing along,
crouched low in the snow, his ears back, his stub tail
twitching nervously, his whole attention fixed tensely
on something beyond me out on the barren. I wanted
his beautiful skin; but I wanted more to find out what
he was after; so I kept still and watched.

At the edge of the barren he crouched under a dwarf
spruce, settled himself deeper in the snow by a wriggle
or two till his feet were well under him and his balance
perfect, and the red fire blazed in his eyes and his big
muscles quivered. Then he hurled himself forward—one,
two, a dozen mighty bounds through flying
snow, and he landed with a screech on the dome of
a beaver house. There he jumped about, shaking an
imaginary beaver like a fury, and gave another screech
that made one’s spine tingle. That over, he stood very
still, looking off over the beaver roofs that dotted the
shore of a little pond there. The blaze died out of
his eyes; a different look crept into them. He put
his nose down to a tiny hole in the mound, the beavers’
ventilator, and took a long sniff, while his whole body
seemed to distend with the warm rich odor that poured
up into his hungry nostrils. Then he rolled his head
sadly, and went away.

Now all that was pure acting. A lynx likes beaver
meat better than anything else; and this fellow had[Pg 79]
caught some of the colony, no doubt, in the well-fed
autumn days, as they worked on their dam and houses.
Sharp hunger made him remember them as he came
through the wood on his nightly hunt after hares.
He knew well that the beavers were safe; that
months of intense cold had made their two-foot mud
walls like granite. But he came, nevertheless, just
to pretend he had caught one, and to remember how
good his last full meal smelled when he ate it in
October.

It was all so boylike, so unexpected there in the
heart of the wilderness, that I quite forgot that I
wanted the lynx’s skin. I was hungry too, and went
out for a sniff at the ventilator; and it smelled good.
I remembered the time once when I had eaten beaver,
and was glad to get it. I walked about among the
houses. On every dome there were lynx tracks, old
and new, and the prints of a blunt nose in the snow.
Evidently he came often to dine on the smell of good
dinners. I looked the way he had gone, and began
to be sorry for him. But there were the beavers, safe
and warm and fearless within two feet of me, listening
undoubtedly to the strange steps without. And that
was good; for they are the most interesting creatures
in all the wilderness.

Most of us know the beaver chiefly in a simile.
“Working like a beaver,” or “busy as a beaver,” is[Pg 80]
one of those proverbial expressions that people accept
without comment or curiosity. It is about one-third
true, which is a generous proportion of truth for a
proverb. In winter, for five long months at least, he
does nothing but sleep and eat and keep warm. “Lazy
as a beaver” is then a good figure. And summer time—ah!
that’s just one long holiday, and the beavers
are jolly as grigs, with never a thought of work from
morning till night. When the snow is gone, and the
streams are clear, and the twitter of bird songs meets
the beaver’s ear as he rises from the dark passage
under water that leads to his house, then he forgets
all settled habits and joins in the general heyday of
nature. The well built house that sheltered him from
storm and cold, and defied even the wolverine to dig
its owner out, is deserted for any otter’s den or chance
hole in the bank where he may sleep away the sunlight
in peace. The great dam, upon which he toiled
so many nights, is left to the mercy of the freshet or
the canoeman’s axe; and no plash of falling water
through a break—that sound which in autumn or
winter brings the beaver like a flash—will trouble
his wise little head for a moment.

All the long summer he belongs to the tribe of
Ishmael, wandering through lakes and streams wherever
fancy leads him. It is as if he were bound to
see the world after being cooped up in his narrow[Pg 81]
quarters all winter. Even the strong family ties,
one of the most characteristic and interesting things
in beaver life, are for the time loosened. Every
family group when it breaks up housekeeping in the
spring represents five generations. First, there are
the two old beavers, heads of the family and absolute
rulers, who first engineered the big dam and houses,
and have directed repairs for nobody knows how long.
Next in importance are the baby beavers, no bigger
than musquashes, with fur like silk velvet, and eyes
always wide open at the wonders of the first season
out; then the one-and two-year-olds, frisky as boys
let loose from school, always in mischief and having
to be looked after, and occasionally nipped; then
the three-year-olds, who presently leave the group
and go their separate happy ways in search of mates.
So the long days go by in a kind of careless summer
excursion; and when one sometimes finds their camping
ground in his own summer roving through the
wilderness, he looks upon it with curious sympathy.
Fellow campers are they, pitching their tents by
sunny lakes and alder-fringed, trout-haunted brooks,
always close to Nature’s heart, and loving the wild,
free life much as he does himself.

But when the days grow short and chill, and the
twitter of warblers gives place to the honk of passing
geese, and wild ducks gather in the lakes, then the[Pg 82]
heart of the beaver goes back to his home; and presently
he follows his heart. September finds them
gathered about the old dam again, the older heads
filled with plans of repair and new houses and winter
food and many other things. The grown-up males
have brought their mates back to the old home; the
females have found their places in other family groups.
It is then that the beaver begins to be busy.

His first concern is for a stout dam across the
stream that will give him a good-sized pond and
plenty of deep water. To understand this, one must
remember that the beaver intends to shut himself in
a kind of prison all winter. He knows well that he
is not safe on land a moment after the snow falls;
that some prowling lucivee or wolverine would find
his tracks and follow him, and that his escape to
water would be cut off by thick ice. So he plans a
big claw-proof house with no entrance save a tunnel
in the middle, which leads through the bank to the
bottom of his artificial pond. Once this is frozen
over, he cannot get out till the spring sun sets him
free. But he likes a big pond, that he may exercise
a bit under water when he comes down for his dinner;
and a deep pond, that he may feel sure the hardest
winter will never freeze down to his doorway and shut
him in. Still more important, the beaver’s food is
stored on the bottom; and it would never do to trust[Pg 83]
it to shallow water, else some severe winter it would
get frozen into the ice, and the beavers starve in
their prison. Ten to fifteen feet usually satisfies their
instinct for safety; but to get that depth of water,
especially on shallow streams, requires a huge dam
and an enormous amount of work, to say nothing
of planning.

Beaver dams are solid structures always, built up
of logs, brush, stones, and driftwood, well knit together
by alder poles. One summer, in canoeing a wild,
unknown stream, I met fourteen dams within a space
of five miles. Through two of these my Indian and
I broke a passage with our axes; the others were so
solid that it was easier to unload our canoe and make
a portage than to break through. Dams are found
close together like that when a beaver colony has
occupied a stream for years unmolested. The food-wood
above the first dam being cut off, they move
down stream; for the beaver always cuts on the
banks above his dam, and lets the current work for
him in transportation. Sometimes, when the banks
are such that a pond cannot be made, three or four
dams will be built close together, the back-water of
one reaching up to the one above, like a series of
locks on a canal. This is to keep the colony together,
and yet give room for play and storage.

There is the greatest difference of opinion as to the[Pg 84]
intelligence displayed by the beavers in choosing a
site for their dam, one observer claiming skill, ingenuity,
even reason for the beavers; another claiming
a mere instinctive haphazard piling together of materials
anywhere in the stream. I have seen perhaps a
hundred different dams in the wilderness, nearly all
of which were well placed. Occasionally I have found
one that looked like a stupid piece of work—two or
three hundred feet of alder brush and gravel across
the widest part of a stream, when, by building just
above or below, a dam one-fourth the length might
have given them better water. This must be said,
however, for the builders, that perhaps they found a
better soil for digging their tunnels, or a more convenient
spot for their houses near their own dam; or
that they knew what they wanted better than their
critic did. I think undoubtedly the young beavers
often make mistakes, but I think also, from studying
a good many dams, that they profit by disaster, and
build better; and that on the whole their mistakes
are not proportionally greater than those of human
builders.

Sometimes a dam proves a very white elephant on
their hands. The site is not well chosen, or the
stream difficult, and the restrained water pours round
the ends of their dam, cutting them away. They build
the dam longer at once; but again the water pours[Pg 85]
round on its work of destruction. So they keep on
building, an interminable structure, till the frosts come,
and they must cut their wood and tumble their houses
together in a desperate hurry to be ready when the ice
closes over them.

But on alder streams, where the current is sluggish
and the soil soft, one sometimes finds a wonderfully
ingenious device for remedying the above difficulty.
When the dam is built, and the water deep enough
for safety, the beavers dig a canal around one end of
the dam to carry off the surplus water. I know of
nothing in all the woods and fields that brings one
closer in thought and sympathy to the little wild folk
than to come across one of these canals, the water
pouring safely through it past the beaver’s handiwork,
the dam stretching straight and solid across the stream,
and the domed houses rising beyond.

Once I found where the beavers had utilized man’s
work. A huge log dam had been built on a wilderness
stream to secure a head of water for driving logs
from the lumber woods. When the pines and fourteen-inch
spruce were all gone, the works were abandoned,
and the dam left—with the gates open, of
course. A pair of young beavers, prospecting for a
winter home, found the place and were suited exactly.
They rolled a sunken log across the gates for a foundation,
filled them up with alder bushes and stones,[Pg 86]
and the work was done. When I found the place
they had a pond a mile wide to play in. Their house
was in a beautiful spot, under a big hemlock; and
their doorway slanted off into twenty feet of water.
That site was certainly well chosen.

Another dam that I found one winter when caribou-hunting
was wonderfully well placed. No engineer
could have chosen better. It was made by the same
colony the lynx was after, and just below where he
went through his pantomime for my benefit; his
tracks were there too. The barrens of which I spoke
are treeless plains in the northern forest, the beds of
ancient shallow lakes. The beavers found one with
a stream running through it; followed the stream
down to the foot of the barren, where two wooded
points came out from either side and almost met.
Here was formerly the outlet; and here the beavers
built their dam, and so made the old lake over again.
It must be a wonderfully fine place in summer—two
or three thousand acres of playground, full of cranberries
and luscious roots. In winter it is too shallow
to be of much use, save for a few acres about the
beavers’ doorways.

There are three ways of dam-building in general
use among the beavers. The first is for use on sluggish,
alder-fringed streams, where they can build up
from the bottom. Two or three sunken logs form[Pg 87]
the foundation, which is from three to five feet broad.
Sticks, driftwood, and stout poles, which the beavers
cut on the banks, are piled on this and weighted with
stones and mud. The stones are rolled in from the
bank or moved considerable distances under water.
The mud is carried in the beaver’s paws, which he
holds up against his chin so as to carry a big handful
without spilling. Beavers love such streams, with
their alder shade and sweet grasses and fringe of
wild meadow, better than all other places. And, by
the way, most of the natural meadows and half the
ponds of New England were made by beavers. If
you go to the foot of any little meadow in the woods
and dig at the lower end, where the stream goes out,
you will find, sometimes ten feet under the surface,
the remains of the first dam that formed the meadow
when the water flowed back and killed the trees.

The second kind of dam is for swift streams. Stout,
ten-foot brush is the chief material. The brush is
floated down to the spot selected; the tops are
weighted down with stones, and the butts left free,
pointing down stream. Such dams must be built out
from the sides, of course. They are generally arched,
the convex side being up stream so as to make a
stronger structure. When the arch closes in the middle,
the lower side of the dam is banked heavily with
earth and stones. That is shrewd policy on the [Pg 88]beaver’s
part; for once the arch is closed by brush, the
current can no longer sweep away the earth and
stones used for the embankment.

The third kind is the strongest and easiest to build.
It is for places where big trees lean out over the
stream. Three or four beavers gather about a tree
and begin to cut, sitting up on their broad tails. One
stands above them on the bank, apparently directing
the work. In a short time the tree is nearly cut
through from the under side. Then the beaver above
begins to cut down carefully. With the first warning
crack he jumps aside, and the tree falls straight across
where it is wanted. All the beavers then disappear
and begin cutting the branches that rest on the bottom.
Slowly the tree settles till its trunk is at the
right height to make the top of the dam. The upper
branches are then trimmed close to the trunk, and
are woven with alders among the long stubs sticking
down from the trunk into the river bed. Stones, mud,
and brush are used liberally to fill the chinks, and in
a remarkably short time the dam is complete.

When you meet such a dam on the stream you are
canoeing don’t attempt to break through. You will find
it shorter by several hours to unload and make a carry.

All the beaver’s cutting is done by chisel-edged
front teeth. There are two of these in each jaw,
extending a good inch and a half outside the gums,[Pg 89]
and meeting at a sharp bevel. The inner sides of the
teeth are softer and wear away faster than the outer,
so that the bevel remains the same; and the action of
the upper and lower teeth over each other keeps them
always sharp. They grow so rapidly that a beaver
must be constantly wood cutting to keep them worn
down to comfortable size.

Often on wild streams you find a stick floating
down to meet you showing a fresh cut. You grab it,
of course, and say: “Somebody is camped above here.
That stick has just been cut with a sharp knife.” But
look closer; see that faint ridge the whole length of
the cut, as if the knife had a tiny gap in its edge.
That is where the beaver’s two upper teeth meet, and
the edge is not quite perfect. He cut that stick,
thicker than a man’s thumb, at a single bite. To
cut an alder having the diameter of a teacup is the
work of a minute for the same tools; and a towering
birch tree falls in a remarkably short time when
attacked by three or four beavers. Around the stump
of such a tree you find a pile of two-inch chips, thick,
white, clean cut, and arched to the curve of the beaver’s
teeth. Judge the workman by his chips, and
this is a good workman.

When the dam is built the beaver cuts his winter
food-wood. A colony of the creatures will often fell
a whole grove of young birch or poplar on the bank[Pg 90]
above the dam. The branches with the best bark are
then cut into short lengths, which are rolled down the
bank and floated to the pool at the dam.

Considerable discussion has taken place as to how
the beaver sinks his wood—for of course he must
sink it, else it would freeze into the ice and be useless.
One theory is that the beavers suck the air
from each stick. Two witnesses declare to me they
have seen them doing it; and in a natural history
book of my childhood there is a picture of a beaver
with the end of a three-foot stick in his mouth, sucking
the air out. Just as if the beavers didn’t know
better, even if the absurd thing were possible! The
simplest way is to cut the wood early and leave it in
the water a while, when it sinks of itself; for green
birch and poplar are almost as heavy as water. They
soon get waterlogged and go to the bottom. It is
almost impossible for lumbermen to drive spool wood
(birch) for this reason. If the nights grow suddenly
cold before the wood sinks, the beavers take it down
to the bottom and press it slightly into the mud;
or else they push sticks under those that float against
the dam, and more under these; and so on till the
stream is full to the bottom, the weight of those above
keeping the others down. Much of the wood is lost
in this way by being frozen into the ice; but the
beaver knows that, and cuts plenty.[Pg 91]

When a beaver is hungry in winter he comes down
under the ice, selects a stick, carries it up into his
house, and eats the bark. Then he carries the peeled
stick back under the ice and puts it aside out of the
way.

Once, in winter, it occurred to me that soaking
spoiled the flavor of bark, and that the beavers might
like a fresh bite. So I cut a hole in the ice on the
pool above their dam. Of course the chopping scared
the beavers; it was vain to experiment that day.
I spread a blanket and some thick boughs over the
hole to keep it from freezing over too thickly, and
went away.

Next day I pushed the end of a freshly cut birch
pole down among the beavers’ store, lay down with
my face to the hole after carefully cutting out the
thin ice, drew a big blanket round my head and the
projecting end of the pole to shut out the light, and
watched. For a while it was all dark as a pocket;
then I began to see things dimly. Presently a darker
shadow shot along the bottom and grabbed the pole.
It was a beaver, with a twenty dollar coat on. He
tugged; I held on tight—which surprised him so
that he went back into his house to catch breath.

But the taste of fresh bark was in his mouth, and
soon he was back with another beaver. Both took
hold this time and pulled together. No use! They[Pg 92]
began to swim round, examining the queer pole on
every side. “What kind of a stick are you, anyway?”
one was thinking. “You didn’t grow here, because
I would have found you long ago.” “And you’re
not frozen into the ice,” said the other, “because you
wriggle.” Then they both took hold again, and I
began to haul up carefully. I wanted to see them
nearer. That surprised them immensely; but I think
they would have held on only for an accident. The
blanket slipped away; a stream of light shot in;
there were two great whirls in the water; and that
was the end of the experiment. They did not come
back, though I waited till I was almost frozen. But
I cut some fresh birch and pushed it under the ice
to pay for my share in the entertainment.

The beaver’s house is generally the last thing
attended to. He likes to build this when the nights
grow cold enough to freeze his mortar soon after it
is laid. Two or three tunnels are dug from the
bottom of the beaver pond up through the bank,
coming to the surface together at the point where
the center of the house is to be. Around this he
lays solid foundations of log and stone in a circle
from six to fifteen feet in diameter, according to the
number of beavers to occupy the house. On these
foundations he rears a thick mass of sticks and grass,
which are held together by plenty of mud. The top[Pg 93]
is roofed by stout sticks arranged as in an Indian
wigwam, and the whole domed over with grass,
stones, sticks, and mud. Once this is solidly frozen,
the beaver sleeps in peace; his house is burglar
proof.

If on a lake shore, where the rise of water is never
great, the beaver’s house is four or five feet high. On
streams subject to freshets they may be two or three
times that height. As in the case of the musquash
(or muskrat), a strange instinct guides the beaver as
to the height of his dwelling. He builds high or low,
according to his expectations of high or low water;
and he is rarely drowned out of his dry nest.

Sometimes two or three families unite to build a
single large house, but always in such cases each
family has its separate apartment. When a house
is dug open it is evident from the different impressions
that each member of the family has his own
bed, which he always occupies. Beavers are exemplary
in their neatness; the house after five months’
use is as neat as when first made.

All their building is primarily a matter of instinct,
for a tame beaver builds miniature dams and houses
on the floor of his cage. Still it is not an uncontrollable
instinct like that of most birds; nor blind,
like that of rats and squirrels at times. I have found
beaver houses on lake shores where no dam was[Pg 94]
built, simply because the water was deep enough,
and none was needed. In vacation time the young
beavers build for fun, just as boys build a dam wherever
they can find running water. I am persuaded
also (and this may explain some of the dams that
seem stupidly placed) that at times the old beavers
set the young to work in summer, in order that they
may know how to build when it becomes necessary.
This is a hard theory to prove, for the beavers work
by night, preferably on dark, rainy nights, when they
are safest on land to gather materials. But while
building is instinctive, skilful building is the result[Pg 95]
of practice and experience. And some of the beaver
dams show wonderful skill.

There is one beaver that never builds, that never
troubles himself about house, or dam, or winter’s
store. I am not sure whether we ought to call him
the genius or the lazy man of the family. The bank
beaver is a solitary old bachelor living in a den, like
a mink, in the bank of a stream. He does not build
a house, because a den under a cedar’s roots is as safe
and warm. He never builds a dam, because there are
deep places in the river where the current is too swift
to freeze. He finds tender twigs much juicier, even
in winter, than stale bark stored under water. As
for his telltale tracks in the snow, his wits must
guard him against enemies; and there is the open
stretch of river to flee to.

There are two theories among Indians and trappers
to account for the bank beaver’s eccentricities. The
first is that he has failed to find a mate and leaves
the colony, or is driven out, to lead a lonely bachelor
life. His conduct during the mating season certainly
favors this theory, for never was anybody more diligent
in his search for a wife than he. Up and down
the streams and alder brooks of a whole wild countryside
he wanders without rest, stopping here and there
on a grassy point to gather a little handful of mud,
like a child’s mud pie, all patted smooth, in the midst[Pg 96]
of which is a little strong smelling musk. When
you find that sign, in a circle of carefully trimmed
grass under the alders, you know that there is a
young beaver on that stream looking for a wife.
And when the young beaver finds his pie opened
and closed again, he knows that there is a mate there
somewhere waiting for him. But the poor bank
beaver never finds his mate, and the next winter
must go back to his solitary den. He is much more
easily caught than other beavers, and the trappers
say it is because he is lonely and tired of life.

The second theory is that generally held by Indians.
They say the bank beaver is lazy and refuses to work
with the others; so they drive him out. When
beavers are busy they are very busy, and tolerate no
loafing. Perhaps he even tries to persuade them
that all their work is unnecessary, and so shares
the fate of reformers in general.

While examining the den of a bank beaver last
summer another theory suggested itself. Is not this
one of the rare animals in which all the instincts of
his kind are lacking? He does not build because
he has no impulse to build; he does not know how.
So he represents what the beaver was, thousands of
years ago, before he learned how to construct his
dam and house, reappearing now by some strange
freak of heredity, and finding himself wofully out of[Pg 97]
place and time. The other beavers drive him away
because all gregarious animals and birds have a
strong fear and dislike of any irregularity in their
kind. Even when the peculiarity is slight—a wound,
or a deformity—they drive the poor victim from their
midst remorselessly. It is a cruel instinct, but part
of one of the oldest in creation, the instinct which
preserves the species. This explains why the bank
beaver never finds a mate; none of the beavers will
have anything to do with him.

This occasional lack of instinct is not peculiar to
the beavers. Now and then a bird is hatched here
in the North that has no impulse to migrate. He
cries after his departing comrades, but never follows.
So he remains and is lost in the storms of winter.

There are few creatures in the wilderness more
difficult to observe than the beavers, both on account
of their extreme shyness and because they work only
by night. The best way to get a glimpse of them at
work is to make a break in their dam and pull the
top from one of their houses some autumn afternoon,
at the time of full moon. Just before twilight you
must steal back and hide some distance from the
dam. Even then the chances are against you, for
the beavers are suspicious, keen of ear and nose, and
generally refuse to show themselves till after the
moon sets or you have gone away. You may have[Pg 98]
to break their dam half a dozen times, and freeze as
often, before you see it repaired.

It is a most interesting sight when it comes at last,
and well repays the watching. The water is pouring
through a five-foot break in the dam; the roof of a
house is in ruins. You have rubbed yourself all over
with fir boughs, to destroy some of the scent in your
clothes, and hidden yourself in the top of a fallen
tree. The twilight goes; the moon wheels over the
eastern spruces, flooding the river with silver light.
Still no sign of life. You are beginning to think of
another disappointment; to think your toes cannot
stand the cold another minute without stamping,
which would spoil everything, when a ripple shoots
swiftly across the pool, and a big beaver comes out
on the bank. He sits up a moment, looking, listening;
then goes to the broken house and sits up again,
looking it all over, estimating damages, making plans.
There is a commotion in the water; three others
join him—you are warm now.

Meanwhile three or four more are swimming about
the dam, surveying the damage there. One dives to
the bottom, but comes up in a moment to report all
safe below. Another is tugging at a thick pole just
below you. Slowly he tows it out in front, balances
a moment and lets it go—good!—squarely across
the break. Two others are cutting alders above;[Pg 99]
and here come the bushes floating down. Over at
the damaged house two beavers are up on the walls,
raising the rafters into place; a third appears to be
laying on the outer covering and plastering it with
mud. Now and then one sits up straight like a
rabbit, listens, stretches his back to get the kinks
out, then drops to his work again.

It is brighter now; moon and stars are glimmering
in the pool. At the dam the sound of falling water
grows faint as the break is rapidly closed. The
houses loom larger. Over the dome of the one
broken, the dark outline of a beaver passes triumphantly.
Quick work that. You grow more interested;
you stretch your neck to see—splash! A
beaver gliding past has seen you. As he dives he
gives the water a sharp blow with his broad tail, the
danger signal of the beavers, and a startling one in
the dead stillness. There is a sound as of a stick
being plunged end first into the water; a few eddies
go running about the pool, breaking up the moon’s
reflection; then silence again, and the lap of ripples
on the shore.

You can go home now; you will see nothing more
to-night. There’s a beaver over under the other
bank, in the shadow where you cannot see him, just
his eyes and ears above water, watching you. He will
not stir; nor will another beaver come out till you[Pg 100]
go away. As you find your canoe and paddle back
to camp, a ripple made by a beaver’s nose follows
silently in the shadow of the alders. At the bend
of the river where you disappear, the ripple halts a
while, like a projecting stub in the current, then turns
and goes swiftly back. There is another splash; the
builders come out again; a dozen ripples are scattering
star reflections all over the pool; while the little
wood folk pause a moment to look at the new works
curiously, then go their ways, shy, silent, industrious,
through the wilderness night.

[Pg 101]

VII. CROW-WAYS.

The crow is very much of a rascal—that
is, if any creature can be called a
rascal for following out natural and rascally
inclinations. I first came to this
conclusion one early morning, several
years ago, as I watched an old crow diligently exploring
a fringe of bushes that grew along the wall of a
deserted pasture. He had eaten a clutch of thrush’s
eggs, and carried off three young sparrows to feed his
own young, before I found out what he was about.
Since then I have surprised him often at the same
depredations.

An old farmer has assured me that he has also
caught him tormenting his sheep, lighting on their
backs and pulling the wool out by the roots to get
fleece for lining his nest. This is a much more serious
charge than that of pulling up corn, though the
latter makes almost every farmer his enemy.

Yet with all his rascality he has many curious and
interesting ways. In fact, I hardly know another bird
that so well repays a season’s study; only one must[Pg 102]
be very patient, and put up with frequent disappointments
if he would learn much of a crow’s peculiarities
by personal observation. How shy he is! How cunning
and quick to learn wisdom! Yet he is very easily
fooled; and some experiences that ought to teach him
wisdom he seems to forget within an hour. Almost
every time I went shooting, in the old barbarian days
before I learned better, I used to get one or two crows
from a flock that ranged over my hunting ground by
simply hiding among the pines and calling like a
young crow. If the flock was within hearing, it was
astonishing to hear the loud chorus of haw-haws, and
to see them come rushing over the same grove where
a week before they had been fooled in the same way.
Sometimes, indeed, they seemed to remember; and
when the pseudo young crow began his racket at the
bottom of some thick grove they would collect on a
distant pine tree and haw-haw in vigorous answer.
But curiosity always got the better of them, and they
generally compromised by sending over some swift,
long-winged old flier, only to see him go tumbling
down at the report of a gun; and away they would
go, screaming at the top of their voices, and never
stopping till they were miles away. Next week they
would do exactly the same thing.

Crows, more than any other birds, are fond of excitement
and great crowds; the slightest unusual object[Pg 103]
furnishes an occasion for an assembly. A wounded
bird will create as much stir in a flock of crows as a
railroad accident does in a village. But when some
prowling old crow discovers an owl sleeping away the
sunlight in the top of a great hemlock, his delight and
excitement know no bounds. There is a suppressed
frenzy in his very call that every crow in the neighborhood
understands. Come! come! everybody come!
he seems to be screaming as he circles over the tree-top;
and within two minutes there are more crows
gathered about that old hemlock than one would
believe existed within miles of the place. I counted
over seventy one day, immediately about a tree in
which one of them had found an owl; and I think
there must have been as many more flying about
the outskirts that I could not count.

At such times one can approach very near with a
little caution, and attend, as it were, a crow caucus.
Though I have attended a great many, I have never
been able to find any real cause for the excitement.
Those nearest the owl sit about in the trees cawing
vociferously; not a crow is silent. Those on the
outskirts are flying rapidly about and making, if possible,
more noise than the inner ring. The owl meanwhile
sits blinking and staring, out of sight in the
green top. Every moment two or three crows leave
the ring to fly up close and peep in, and then go[Pg 104]
screaming back again, hopping about on their perches,
cawing at every breath, nodding their heads, striking
the branches, and acting for all the world like excited
stump speakers.

The din grows louder and louder; fresh voices are
coming in every minute; and the owl, wondering in
some vague way if he is the cause of it all, flies off to
some other tree where he can be quiet and go to sleep.
Then, with a great rush and clatter, the crows follow,
some swift old scout keeping close to the owl and
screaming all the way to guide the whole cawing
rabble. When the owl stops they gather round again
and go through the same performance more excitedly
than before. So it continues till the owl finds some
hollow tree and goes in out of sight, leaving them to
caw themselves tired; or else he finds some dense
pine grove, and doubles about here and there, with
that shadowy noiseless flight of his, till he has thrown
them off the track. Then he flies into the thickest
tree he can find, generally outside the grove where
the crows are looking, and sitting close up against
the trunk blinks his great yellow eyes and listens
to the racket that goes sweeping through the grove,
peering curiously into every thick pine, searching
everywhere for the lost excitement.

The crows give him up reluctantly. They circle
for a few minutes over the grove, rising and falling[Pg 105]
with that beautiful, regular motion that seems like the
practice drill of all gregarious birds, and generally end
by collecting in some tree at a distance and hawing
about it for hours, till some new excitement calls
them elsewhere.

Just why they grow so excited over an owl is an
open question. I have never seen them molest him,
nor show any tendency other than to stare at him
occasionally and make a great noise about it. That
they recognize him as a thief and cannibal I have no
doubt. But he thieves by night when other birds are
abed, and as they practise their own thieving by open
daylight, it may be that they are denouncing him as
an impostor. Or it may be that the owl in his nightly
prowlings sometimes snatches a young crow off the
roost. The great horned owl would hardly hesitate
to eat an old crow if he could catch him napping;
and so they grow excited, as all birds do in the presence
of their natural enemies. They make much the
same kind of a fuss over a hawk, though the latter
easily escapes the annoyance by flying swiftly away,
or by circling slowly upward to a height so dizzy that
the crows dare not follow.

In the early spring I have utilized this habit of the
crows in my search for owls’ nests. The crows are
much more apt to discover its whereabouts than the
most careful ornithologist, and they gather about it[Pg 106]
frequently for a little excitement. Once I utilized the
habit for getting a good look at the crows themselves.
I carried out an old stuffed owl, and set it up on a
pole close against a great pine tree on the edge of a
grove. Then I lay down in a thick clump of bushes
near by and cawed excitedly. The first messenger
from the flock flew straight over without making any
discoveries. The second one found the owl, and I had
no need for further calling. Haw! haw! he cried
deep down in his throat—here he is! here’s the rascal!
In a moment he had the whole flock there; and for
nearly ten minutes they kept coming in from every
direction. A more frenzied lot I never saw. The
hawing was tremendous, and I hoped to settle at last
the real cause and outcome of the excitement, when
an old crow flying close over my hiding place caught
sight of me looking out through the bushes. How
he made himself heard or understood in the din I do
not know; but the crow is never too excited to heed
a danger note. The next moment the whole flock
were streaming away across the woods, giving the
scatter-cry at every flap.

There is another way in which the crows’ love of
variety is manifest, though in a much more dignified
way. Occasionally a flock may be surprised sitting
about in the trees, deeply absorbed in watching a
performance—generally operatic—by one of their [Pg 107]number.
The crow’s chief note is the hoarse haw, haw
with which everybody is familiar, and which seems
capable of expressing everything, from the soft chatter
of going to bed in the pine tops to the loud derision
with which he detects all ordinary attempts to
surprise him. Certain crows, however, have unusual
vocal abilities, and at times they seem to use them
for the entertainment of the others. Yet I suspect
that these vocal gifts are seldom used, or even discovered,
until lack of amusement throws them upon their
own resources. Certain it is that, whenever a crow
makes any unusual sounds, there are always several
more about, hawing vigorously, yet seeming to listen
attentively. I have caught them at this a score of
times.

One September afternoon, while walking quietly
through the woods, my attention was attracted by an
unusual sound coming from an oak grove, a favorite
haunt of gray squirrels. The crows were cawing in
the same direction; but every few minutes would
come a strange cracking sound—c-r-r-rack-a-rack-rack,
as if some one had a giant nutcracker and were snapping
it rapidly. I stole forward through the low woods
till I could see perhaps fifty crows perched about in
the oaks, all very attentive to something going on
below them that I could not see.

Not till I had crawled up to the brush fence, on the[Pg 108]
very edge of the grove, and peeked through did I see
the performer. Out on the end of a long delicate
branch, a few feet above the ground, a small crow was
clinging, swaying up and down like a bobolink on a
cardinal flower, balancing himself gracefully by spreading
his wings, and every few minutes giving the strange
cracking sound, accompanied by a flirt of his wings
and tail as the branch swayed upward. At every
repetition the crows hawed in applause. I watched
them fully ten minutes before they saw me and flew
away.

Several times since, I have been attracted by unusual
sounds, and have surprised a flock of crows which
were evidently watching a performance by one of their
number. Once it was a deep musical whistle, much
like the too-loo-loo of the blue jay (who is the crow’s
cousin, for all his bright colors), but deeper and fuller,
and without the trill that always marks the blue jay’s
whistle. Once, in some big woods in Maine, it was
a hoarse bark, utterly unlike a bird call, which made
me slip heavy shells into my gun and creep forward,
expecting some strange beast that I had never before
met.

The same love of variety and excitement leads the
crow to investigate any unusual sight or sound that
catches his attention. Hide anywhere in the woods,
and make any queer sound you will—play a jews’-harp,[Pg 109]
or pull a devil’s fiddle, or just call softly—and first
comes a blue jay, all agog to find out all about it.
Next a red squirrel steals down and barks just over
your head, to make you start if possible. Then, if
your eyes are sharp, you will see a crow gliding from
thicket to thicket, keeping out of sight as much as
possible, but drawing nearer and nearer to investigate
the unusual sound. And if he is suspicious or unsatisfied,
he will hide and wait patiently for you to come
out and show yourself.

Not only is he curious about you, and watches you
as you go about the woods, but he watches his neighbors
as well. When a fox is started you can often
trace his course, far ahead of your dogs, by the crows
circling over him and calling rascal, rascal, whenever
he shows himself. He watches the ducks and
plover, the deer and bear; he knows where they are,
and what they are doing; and he will go far out of his
way to warn them, as well as his own kind, at the
approach of danger. When birds nest, or foxes den,
or beasts fight in the woods, he is there to see it.
When other things fail he will even play jokes, as
upon one occasion when I saw a young crow hide in
a hole in a pine tree, and for two hours keep a whole
flock in a frenzy of excitement by his distressed cawing.
He would venture out when they were at a
distance, peek all about cautiously to see that no one[Pg 110]
saw him, then set up a heart-rending appeal, only to
dodge back out of sight when the flock came rushing
in with a clamor that was deafening.

Only one of two explanations can account for his
action in this case; either he was a young crow who
did not appreciate the gravity of crying wolf, wolf!
when there was no wolf, or else it was a plain game
of hide-and-seek. When the crows at length found
him they chased him out of sight, either to chastise
him, or, as I am inclined now to think, each one
sought to catch him for the privilege of being the
next to hide.

In fact, whenever one hears a flock of crows hawing
away in the woods, he may be sure that some
excitement is afoot that will well repay his time and
patience to investigate.

Since the above article was written, some more
curious crow-ways have come to light. Here is one
which seems to throw light on the question of their
playing games. I found it out one afternoon last
September, when a vigorous cawing over in the
woods induced me to leave the orchard, where I was
picking apples, for the more exciting occupation of
spying on my dark neighbors.

The clamor came from an old deserted pasture,[Pg 111]
bounded on three sides by pine woods, and on the
fourth by half wild fields that straggled away to the
dusty road beyond. Once, long ago, there was a
farm there; but even the cellars have disappeared,
and the crows no longer fear the place.

It was an easy task to creep unobserved through
the nearest pine grove, and gain a safe hiding place
under some junipers on the edge of the old pasture.
The cawing meanwhile was intermittent; at times it
broke out in a perfect babel, as if every crow were
doing his best to outcaw all the others; again there
was silence save for an occasional short note, the
all’s well of the sentinel on guard. The crows are
never so busy or so interested that they neglect this
precaution.

When I reached the junipers, the crows—half a
hundred of them—were ranged in the pine tops
along one edge of the open. They were quiet enough,
save for an occasional scramble for position, evidently
waiting for something to happen. Down on my
right, on the fourth or open side of the pasture, a
solitary old crow was perched in the top of a tall
hickory. I might have taken him for a sentry but
for a bright object which he held in his beak. It
was too far to make out what the object was; but
whenever he turned his head it flashed in the sunlight
like a bit of glass.[Pg 112]

As I watched him curiously he launched himself
into the air and came speeding down the center of
the field, making for the pines at the opposite end.
Instantly every crow was on the wing; they shot out
from both sides, many that I had not seen before,
all cawing like mad. They rushed upon the old
fellow from the hickory, and for a few moments it
was impossible to make out anything except a whirling,
diving rush of black wings. The din meanwhile
was deafening.

Something bright dropped from the excited flock,
and a single crow swooped after it; but I was too
much interested in the rush to note what became of
him. The clamor ceased abruptly. The crows, after
a short practice in rising, falling, and wheeling to
command, settled in the pines on both sides of the
field, where they had been before. And there in
the hickory was another crow with the same bright,
flashing thing in his beak.

There was a long wait this time, as if for a breathing
spell. Then the solitary crow came skimming
down the field again without warning. The flock
surrounded him on the moment, with the evident
intention of hindering his flight as much as possible.
They flapped their wings in his face; they zig-zagged
in front of him; they attempted to light on his back.
In vain he twisted and dodged and dropped like[Pg 113]
a stone. Wherever he turned
he found fluttering wings to oppose
his flight. The first object of
the game was apparent: he was trying
to reach the goal of pines opposite
the hickory, and the others
were trying to prevent it. Again
and again the leader was lost to
sight; but whenever the sunlight
flashed from the bright
thing he carried, he
was certain to be
found in the very
midst of a clamoring
crowd. Then the second object was clear: the crows
were trying to confuse him and make him drop
the talisman.

[Pg 114]

They circled rapidly down the field and back
again, near the watcher. Suddenly the bright thing
dropped, reaching the ground before it was discovered.
Three or four crows swooped upon it, and
a lively scrimmage began for its possession. In the
midst of the struggle a small crow shot under the
contestants, and before they knew what was up he
was scurrying away to the hickory with the coveted
trinket held as high as he could carry it, as if in
triumph at his sharp trick.

The flock settled slowly into the pines again with
much hawing. There was evidently a question whether
the play ought to be allowed or not. Everybody had
something to say about it; and there was no end of
objection. At last it was settled good-naturedly, and
they took places to watch till the new leader should
give them opportunity for another chase.

There was no doubt left in the watcher’s mind by
this time as to what the crows were doing. They
were just playing a game, like so many schoolboys,
enjoying to the full the long bright hours of the September
afternoon. Did they find the bright object as
they crossed the pasture on the way from Farmer B’s
corn-field, and the game so suggest itself? Or was the
game first suggested, and the talisman brought afterwards?
Every crow has a secret storehouse, where
he hides every bright thing he finds. Sometimes it[Pg 115]
is a crevice in the rocks under moss and ferns; sometimes
the splintered end of a broken branch; sometimes
a deserted owl’s nest in a hollow tree; often
a crotch in a big pine, covered carefully by brown
needles; but wherever it is, it is full of bright things—glass,
and china, and beads, and tin, and an old spoon,
and a silvered buckle—and nobody but the crow
himself knows how to find it. Did some crow fetch
his best trinket for the occasion, or was this a special
thing for games, and kept by the flock where any crow
could get it?

These were some of the interesting things that were
puzzling the watcher when he noticed that the hickory
was empty. A flash over against the dark green revealed
the leader. There he was, stealing along in
the shadow, trying to reach the goal before they saw
him. A derisive haw announced his discovery. Then
the fun began again, as noisy, as confusing, as thoroughly
enjoyable as ever.

When the bright object dropped this time, curiosity
to get possession of it was stronger than my interest
in the game. Besides, the apples were waiting. I
jumped up, scattering the crows in wild confusion;
but as they streamed away I fancied that there was
still more of the excitement of play than of alarm in
their flight and clamor.

The bright object which the leader carried proved[Pg 116]
to be the handle of a glass cup or pitcher. A fragment
of the vessel itself had broken off with the handle,
so that the ring was complete. Altogether it was
just the thing for the purpose—bright, and not too
heavy, and most convenient for a crow to seize and
carry. Once well gripped, it would take a good deal
of worrying to make him drop it.

Who first was “it,” as children say in games?
Was it a special privilege of the crow who first found
the talisman, or do the crows have some way of counting
out for the first leader? There is a school-house
down that same old dusty road. Sometimes, when at
play there, I used to notice the crows stealing silently
from tree to tree in the woods beyond, watching our
play, I have no doubt, as I now had watched theirs.
Only we have grown older, and forgotten how to play;
and they are as much boys as ever. Did they learn
their game from watching us at tag, I wonder? And
do they know coram, and leave-stocks, and prisoners’
base, and bull-in-the-ring as well? One could easily
believe their wise little black heads to be capable of
any imitation, especially if one had watched them a
few times, at work and play, when they had no idea
they were being spied upon.

[Pg 117]

VIII. ONE TOUCH OF NATURE.

The cheery whistle of a quail
recalls to most New England
people a vision of breezy
upland pastures and a mottled
brown bird calling melodiously
from the topmost
slanting rail of an old sheep-fence.
Farmers say he foretells
the weather, calling,
More-wet—much-more-wet!
Boys say he only proclaims
his name, Bob White! I’m
Bob White! But whether
he prognosticates or introduces himself, his voice is
always a welcome one. Those who know the call
listen with pleasure, and speedily come to love the
bird that makes it.

Bob White has another call, more beautiful than his
boyish whistle, which comparatively few have heard.
It is a soft liquid yodeling, which the male bird uses
to call the scattered flock together. One who walks[Pg 118]
in the woods at sunset sometimes hears it from a tangle
of grapevine and bullbrier. If he has the patience
to push his way carefully through the underbrush, he
may see the beautiful Bob on a rock or stump, uttering
the softest and most musical of whistles. He is
telling his flock that here is a nice place he has found,
where they can spend the night and be safe from owls
and prowling foxes.

If the visitor be very patient, and lie still, he will
presently hear the pattering of tiny feet on the leaves,
and see the brown birds come running in from every
direction. Once in a lifetime, perhaps, he may see
them gather in a close circle—tails together, heads
out, like the spokes of a wheel, and so go to sleep for
the night. Their soft whistlings and chirpings at such
times form the most delightful sound one ever hears
in the woods.

This call of the male bird is not difficult to imitate.
Hunters who know the birds will occasionally use it to
call a scattered covey together, or to locate the male
birds, which generally answer the leader’s call. I have
frequently called a flock of the birds into a thicket at
sunset, and caught running glimpses of them as they
hurried about, looking for the bugler who called taps.

All this occurred to me late one afternoon in the
great Zoological Gardens at Antwerp. I was watching
a yard of birds—three or four hundred representatives
[Pg 119]of the pheasant family from all over the earth
that were running about among the rocks and artificial
copses. Some were almost as wild as if in their native
woods, especially the smaller birds in the trees; others
had grown tame from being constantly fed by visitors.

It was rather confusing to a bird lover, familiar only
with home birds, to see all the strange forms and
colors in the grass, and to hear a chorus of unknown
notes from trees and underbrush. But suddenly there
was a touch of naturalness. That beautiful brown
bird with the shapely body and the quick, nervous run!
No one could mistake him; it was Bob White. And
with him came a flash of the dear New England
landscape three thousand miles away. Another and
another showed himself and was gone. Then I thought
of the woods at sunset, and began to call softly.

The carnivora were being fed not far away; a frightful
uproar came from the cages. The coughing roar of
a male lion made the air shiver. Cockatoos screamed;
noisy parrots squawked hideously. Children were
playing and shouting near by. In the yard itself fifty
birds were singing or crying strange notes. Besides
all this, the quail I had seen had been hatched far
from home, under a strange mother. So I had little
hope of success.

But as the call grew louder and louder, a liquid
yodel came like an electric shock from a clump of[Pg 120]
bushes on the left. There he was, looking, listening.
Another call, and he came running toward me.
Others appeared from every direction, and soon a
score of quail were running about, just inside the
screen, with soft gurglings like a hidden brook, doubly
delightful to an ear that had longed to hear them.

City, gardens, beasts, strangers,—all vanished in an
instant. I was a boy in the fields again. The rough
New England hillside grew tender and beautiful in
sunset light; the hollows were rich in autumn glory.
The pasture brook sang on its way to the river; a
robin called from a crimson maple; and all around
was the dear low, thrilling whistle, and the patter of
welcome feet on leaves, as Bob White came running
again to meet his countryman.

[Pg 121]

IX. MOOSE CALLING.

Midnight in the wilderness.
The belated moon wheels
slowly above the eastern ridge,
where for a few minutes past
a mighty pine and hundreds of
pointed spruce tops have been
standing out in inky blackness
against the gray and brightening background. The
silver light steals swiftly down the evergreen tops,
sending long black shadows creeping before it, and
falls glistening and shimmering across the sleeping
waters of a forest lake. No ripple breaks its polished
surface; no plash of musquash or leaping trout sends
its vibrations up into the still, frosty air; no sound of
beast or bird awakens the echoes of the silent forest.
Nature seems dying, her life frozen out of her by the
chill of the October night; and no voice tells of her
suffering.

A moment ago the little lake lay all black and
uniform, like a great well among the hills, with only
glimmering star-points to reveal its surface. Now,[Pg 122]
down in a bay below a grassy point, where the dark
shadows of the eastern shore reach almost across, a
dark object is lying silent and motionless on the lake.
Its side seems gray and uncertain above the water;
at either end is a dark mass, that in the increasing
light takes the form of human head and shoulders.
A bark canoe with two occupants is before us; but
so still, so lifeless apparently, that till now we thought
it part of the shore beyond.

There is a movement in the stern; the profound
stillness is suddenly broken by a frightful
roar: M-wah-úh! M-waah-úh! M-w-wã-a-ã-ã-a! The
echoes rouse themselves swiftly, and rush away confused
and broken, to and fro across the lake. As
they die away among the hills there is a sound from
the canoe as if an animal were walking in shallow
water, splash, splash, splash, klop! then silence again,
that is not dead, but listening.

A half-hour passes; but not for an instant does
the listening tension of the lake relax. Then the
loud bellow rings out again, startling us and the
echoes, though we were listening for it. This time
the tension increases an hundredfold; every nerve
is strained; every muscle ready. Hardly have the
echoes been lost when from far up the ridges comes
a deep, sudden, ugly roar that penetrates the woods
like a rifle-shot. Again it comes, and nearer! Down[Pg 123]
in the canoe a paddle blade touches the water noiselessly
from the stern; and over the bow there is the
glint of moonlight on a rifle barrel. The roar is now
continuous on the summit of the last low ridge.
Twigs crackle, and branches snap. There is the
thrashing of mighty antlers among the underbrush,
the pounding of heavy hoofs upon the earth; and
straight down the great bull rushes like a tempest,
nearer, nearer, till he bursts with tremendous crash
through the last fringe of alders out onto the grassy
point.—And then the heavy boom of a rifle rolling
across the startled lake.

Such is moose calling, in one of its phases—the
most exciting, the most disappointing, the most trying
way of hunting this noble game.

The call of the cow moose, which the hunter always
uses at first, is a low, sudden bellow, quite impossible
to describe accurately. Before ever hearing it, I had
frequently asked Indians and hunters what it was like.
The answers were rather unsatisfactory. “Like a
tree falling,” said one. “Like the sudden swell of a
cataract or the rapids at night,” said another. “Like
a rifle-shot, or a man shouting hoarsely,” said a third;
and so on till like a menagerie at feeding time was
my idea of it.

One night as I sat with my friend at the door of
our bark tent, eating our belated supper in tired[Pg 124]
silence, while the rush of the salmon pool near and
the sigh of the night wind in the spruces were lulling
us to sleep as we ate, a sound suddenly filled the
forest, and was gone. Strangely enough, we pronounced
the word moose together, though neither
of us had ever heard the sound before. ‘Like a
gun in a fog’ would describe the sound to me better
than anything else, though after hearing it many
times the simile is not at all accurate. This first
indefinite sound is heard early in the season. Later
it is prolonged and more definite, and often repeated
as I have given it.

The answer of the bull varies but little. It is a
short, hoarse, grunting roar, frightfully ugly when
close at hand, and leaving no doubt as to the mood
he is in. Sometimes when a bull is shy, and the
hunter thinks he is near and listening, though no
sound gives any idea of his whereabouts, he follows
the bellow of the cow by the short roar of the bull,
at the same time snapping the sticks under his feet,
and thrashing the bushes with a club. Then, if the
bull answers, look out. Jealous, and fighting mad,
he hurls himself out of his concealment and rushes
straight in to meet his rival. Once aroused in this way
he heeds no danger, and the eye must be clear and
the muscles steady to stop him surely ere he reaches
the thicket where the hunter is concealed. Moonlight
[Pg 125]is poor stuff to shoot by at best, and an enraged
bull moose is a very big and a very ugly customer.
It is a poor thicket, therefore, that does not have at
least one good tree with conveniently low branches.
As a rule, however, you may trust your Indian, who
is an arrant coward, to look out for this very carefully.

The trumpet with which the calling is done is
simply a piece of birch bark, rolled up cone-shaped
with the smooth side within. It is fifteen or sixteen
inches long, about four inches in diameter at the
larger, and one inch at the smaller end. The right
hand is folded round the smaller end for a mouthpiece;
into this the caller grunts and roars and
bellows, at the same time swinging the trumpet’s
mouth in sweeping curves to imitate the peculiar
quaver of the cow’s call. If the bull is near and
suspicious, the sound is deadened by holding the
mouth of the trumpet close to the ground. This,
to me, imitates the real sound more accurately than
any other attempt.

So many conditions must be met at once for successful
calling, and so warily does a bull approach,
that the chances are always strongly against the
hunter’s seeing his game. The old bulls are shy from
much hunting; the younger ones fear the wrath of
an older rival. It is only once in a lifetime, and far
back from civilization, where the moose have not[Pg 126]
been hunted, that one’s call is swiftly answered by
a savage old bull that knows no fear. Here one is
never sure what response his call will bring; and the
spice of excitement, and perhaps danger, is added to
the sport.

In illustration of the uncertainty of calling, the
writer recalls with considerable pride his first attempt,
which was somewhat startling in its success. It was
on a lake, far back from the settlements, in northern
New Brunswick. One evening, late in August,
while returning from fishing, I heard the bellow
of a cow moose on a hardwood ridge above me.
Along the base of the ridge stretched a bay with
grassy shores, very narrow where it entered the lake,
but broadening out to fifty yards across, and reaching
back half a mile to meet a stream that came down
from a smaller lake among the hills. All this I
noted carefully while gliding past; for it struck me
as an ideal place for moose calling, if one were
hunting.

The next evening, while fishing alone in the cold
stream referred to, I heard the moose again on the
same ridge; and in a sudden spirit of curiosity determined
to try the effect of a roar or two on her, in
imitation of an old bull. I had never heard of a cow
answering the call; and I had no suspicion then that
the bull was anywhere near. I was not an expert[Pg 127]
caller. Under tuition of my Indian (who was himself
a rather poor hand at it) I had practised two or
three times till he told me, with charming frankness,
that possibly a man might mistake me for a moose,
if he hadn’t heard one very often. So here was a
chance for more practice and a bit of variety. If it
frightened her it would do no harm, as we were not
hunting.

Running the canoe quietly ashore below where the
moose had called, I peeled the bark from a young
birch, rolled it into a trumpet, and, standing on the
grassy bank, uttered the deep grunt of a bull two
or three times in quick succession. The effect was
tremendous. From the summit of the ridge, not
two hundred yards above where I stood, the angry
challenge of a bull was hurled down upon me out
of the woods. Then it seemed as if a steam engine
were crashing full speed through the underbrush.
In fewer seconds than it takes to write it the canoe
was well out into deep water, lying motionless with
the bow inshore. A moment later a huge bull plunged
through the fringe of alders onto the open bank,
gritting his teeth, grunting, stamping the earth savagely,
and thrashing the bushes with his great antlers—as
ugly a picture as one would care to meet in
the woods.

He seemed bewildered at not seeing his rival, ran[Pg 128]
swiftly along the bank, turned and came swinging
back again, all the while uttering his hoarse challenge.
Then the canoe swung in the slight current; in getting
control of it again the movement attracted his
attention, and he saw me for the first time. In a
moment he was down the bank into shallow water,
striking with his hoofs and tossing his huge head
up and down like an angry bull. Fortunately the
water was deep, and he did not try to swim out; for
there was not a weapon of any kind in the canoe.

When I started down towards the lake, after baiting
the bull’s fury awhile by shaking the paddle and
splashing water at him, he followed me along the
bank, keeping up his threatening demonstrations.
Down near the lake he plunged suddenly ahead
before I realized the danger, splashed out into the
narrow opening in front of the canoe—and there I
was, trapped.

It was dark when I at last got out of it. To get by
the ugly beast in that narrow opening was out of the
question, as I found out after a half-hour’s trying.
Just at dusk I turned the canoe and paddled slowly
back; and the moose, leaving his post, followed as
before along the bank. At the upper side of a little
bay I paddled close up to shore, and waited till he
ran round, almost up to me, before backing out into
deep water. Splashing seemed to madden the brute,[Pg 129]
so I splashed him, till in his fury he waded out
deeper and deeper, to strike the exasperating canoe
with his antlers. When he would follow no further,
I swung the canoe suddenly, and headed for the
opening at a racing stroke. I had a fair start before
he understood the trick; but I never turned to see
how he made the bank and circled the little bay.
The splash and plunge of hoofs was fearfully close
behind me as the canoe shot through the opening;
and as the little bark swung round on the open waters
of the lake, for a final splash and flourish of the paddle,
and a yell or two of derision, there stood the bull in
the inlet, still thrashing his antlers and gritting his
teeth; and there I left him.

The season of calling is a short one, beginning
early in September and lasting till the middle of
October. Occasionally a bull will answer as late as
November, but this is unusual. In this season a perfectly
still night is perhaps the first requisite. The
bull, when he hears the call, will often approach to
within a hundred yards without making a sound. It
is simply wonderful how still the great brute can be
as he moves slowly through the woods. Then he
makes a wide circuit till he has gone completely
round the spot where he heard the call; and if there
is the slightest breeze blowing he scents the danger,
and is off on the instant. On a still night his big[Pg 130]
trumpet-shaped ears are marvelously acute. Only
absolute silence on the hunter’s part can insure
success.

Another condition quite as essential is moonlight.
The moose sometimes calls just before dusk and just
before sunrise; but the bull is more wary at such
times, and very loth to show himself in the open.
Night diminishes his extreme caution, and unless he
has been hunted he responds more readily. Only a
bright moonlight can give any accuracy to a rifle-shot.
To attempt it by starlight would result simply
in frightening the game, or possibly running into
danger.

By far the best place for calling, if one is in a
moose country, is from a canoe on some quiet lake
or river. A spot is selected midway between two
open shores, near together if possible. On whichever
side the bull answers, the canoe is backed silently
away into the shadow against the opposite bank;
and there the hunters crouch motionless till their
game shows himself clearly in the moonlight on the
open shore.

If there is no water in the immediate vicinity of
the hunting ground, then a thicket in the midst of an
open spot is the place to call. Such spots are found
only about the barrens, which are treeless plains scattered
here and there throughout the great northern[Pg 131]
wilderness. The scattered thickets on such plains
are, without doubt, the islands of the ancient lakes
that once covered them. Here the hunter collects a
thick nest of dry moss and fir tips at sundown, and
spreads the thick blanket that he has brought on his
back all the weary way from camp; for without it
the cold of the autumn night would be unendurable
to one who can neither light a fire nor move about to
get warm. When a bull answers a call from such a
spot he will generally circle the barren, just within
the edge of the surrounding forest, and unless enraged
by jealousy will seldom venture far out into the open.
This fearfulness of the open characterizes the moose
in all places and seasons. He is a creature of the
forest, never at ease unless within quick reach of its
protection.

An exciting incident happened to Mitchell, my
Indian guide, one autumn, while hunting on one of
these barrens with a sportsman whom he was guiding.
He was moose calling one night from a thicket near
the middle of a narrow barren. No answer came to
his repeated calling, though for an hour or more he
had felt quite sure that a bull was within hearing,
somewhere within the dark fringe of forest. He was
about to try the roar of the bull, when it suddenly
burst out of the woods behind them, in exactly the
opposite quarter from that in which they believed[Pg 132]
their game was concealed. Mitchell started to creep
across the thicket, but scarcely had the echoes
answered when, in front of them, a second challenge
sounded sharp and fierce; and they saw, directly
across the open, the underbrush at the forest’s edge
sway violently, as the bull they had long suspected
broke out in a towering rage. He was slow in
advancing, however, and Mitchell glided rapidly
across the thicket, where a moment later his excited
hiss called his companion. From the opposite fringe
of forest the second bull had hurled himself out, and
was plunging with savage grunts straight towards
them.

Crouching low among the firs they awaited his
headlong rush; not without many a startled glance
backward, and a very uncomfortable sense of being
trapped and frightened, as Mitchell confessed to me
afterward. He had left his gun in camp; his employer
had insisted upon it, in his eagerness to kill
the moose himself.

The bull came rapidly within rifle-shot. In a
minute more he would be within their hiding place;
and the rifle sight was trying to cover a vital spot,
when right behind them—at the thicket’s edge, it
seemed—a frightful roar and a furious pounding of
hoofs brought them to their feet with a bound. A
second later the rifle was lying among the bushes,[Pg 133]
and a panic-stricken hunter was scratching and smashing
in a desperate hurry up among the branches of
a low spruce, as if only the tiptop were half high
enough. Mitchell was nowhere to be seen; unless
one had the eyes of an owl to find him down among
the roots of a fallen pine.

But the first moose smashed straight through the
thicket without looking up or down; and out on the
open barren a tremendous struggle began. There
was a minute’s confused uproar, of savage grunts
and clashing antlers and pounding hoofs and hoarse,
labored breathing; then the excitement of the fight
was too strong to be resisted, and a dark form wriggled
out from among the roots, only to stretch itself
flat under a bush and peer cautiously at the struggling
brutes not thirty feet away. Twice Mitchell hissed
for his employer to come down; but that worthy was
safe astride the highest branch that would bear his
weight, with no desire evidently for a better view of
the fight. Then Mitchell found the rifle among the
bushes and, waiting till the bulls backed away for one
of their furious charges, killed the larger one in his
tracks. The second stood startled an instant, with
raised head and muscles quivering, then dashed away
across the barren and into the forest.

Such encounters are often numbered among the
tragedies of the great wilderness. In tramping[Pg 134]
through the forest one sometimes comes upon two
sets of huge antlers locked firmly together, and white
bones, picked clean by hungry prowlers. It needs
no written record to tell their story.

Once I saw a duel that resulted differently. I
heard a terrific uproar, and crept through the woods,
thinking to have a savage wilderness spectacle all to
myself. Two young bulls were fighting desperately
in an open glade, just because they were strong and
proud of their first big horns.

But I was not alone, as I expected. A great flock
of crossbills swooped down into the spruces, and
stopped whistling in their astonishment. A dozen
red squirrels snickered and barked their approval,
as the bulls butted each other. Meeko is always
glad when mischief is afoot. High overhead floated
a rare woods’ raven, his head bent sharply downward
to see. Moose-birds flitted in restless excitement
from tree to bush. Kagax the weasel postponed his
bloodthirsty errand to the young rabbits. And just
beside me, under the fir tips, Tookhees the wood-mouse
forgot his fear of the owl and the fox and his
hundred enemies, and sat by his den in broad daylight,
rubbing his whiskers nervously.

So we watched, till the bull that was getting the
worst of it backed near me, and got my wind, and the
fight was over.

[Pg 135]

X. CH’GEEGEE-LOKH-SIS.

That is the name which the northern
Indians give to the black-capped tit-mouse,
or chickadee. “Little friend
Ch’geegee” is what it means; for the
Indians, like everybody else who knows
Chickadee, are fond of this cheery little brightener of
the northern woods. The first time I asked Simmo
what his people called the bird, he answered with a
smile. Since then I have asked other Indians, and
always a smile, a pleased look lit up the dark grim[Pg 136]
faces as they told me. It is another tribute to the
bright little bird’s influence.

Chickadee wears well. He is not in the least a
creature of moods. You step out of your door some
bright morning, and there he is among the shrubs,
flitting from twig to twig; now hanging head down
from the very tip to look into a terminal bud; now
winding upward about a branch, looking industriously
into every bud and crevice. An insect must hide well
to escape those bright eyes. He is helping you raise
your plants. He looks up brightly as you approach,
hops fearlessly down and looks at you with frank,
innocent eyes. Chick a dee dee dee dee! Tsic a
de-e-e?—this last with a rising inflection, as if he were asking
how you were, after he had said good-morning.
Then he turns to his insect hunting again, for he
never wastes more than a moment talking. But he
twitters sociably as he works.

You meet him again in the depths of the wilderness.
The smoke of your camp fire has hardly risen
to the spruce tops when close beside you sounds the
same cheerful greeting and inquiry for your health.
There he is on the birch twig, bright and happy and
fearless! He comes down by the fire to see if anything
has boiled over which he may dispose of. He
picks up gratefully the crumbs you scatter at your
feet. He trusts you.—See! he rests a moment on[Pg 137]
the finger you extend, looks curiously at the nail,
and sounds it with his bill to see if it shelters any
harmful insect. Then he goes back to his birch
twigs.

On summer days he never overflows with the rollicksomeness
of bobolink and oriole, but takes his
abundance in quiet contentment. I suspect it is
because he works harder winters, and his enjoyment
is more deep than theirs. In winter when the snow
lies deep, he is the life of the forest. He calls to you
from the edges of the bleak caribou barrens, and his
greeting somehow suggests the May. He comes into
your rude bark camp, and eats of your simple fare,
and leaves a bit of sunshine behind him. He goes
with you, as you force your way heavily through the
fir thickets on snowshoes. He is hungry, perhaps,
like you, but his note is none the less cheery and
hopeful.

When the sun shines hot in August, he finds you
lying under the alders, with the lake breeze in your
face, and he opens his eyes very wide and says: “Tsic
a dee-e-e? I saw you last winter. Those were hard
times. But it’s good to be here now.” And when the
rain pours down, and the woods are drenched, and camp
life seems beastly altogether, he appears suddenly with
greeting cheery as the sunshine. “Tsic a de-e-e-e?
Don’t you remember yesterday? It rains, to be sure,[Pg 138]
but the insects are plenty, and to-morrow the sun
will shine.” His cheerfulness is contagious. Your
thoughts are better than before he came.

Really, he is a wonderful little fellow; there is no
end to the good he does. Again and again I have
seen a man grow better tempered or more cheerful,
without knowing why he did so, just because Chickadee
stopped a moment to be cheery and sociable. I
remember once when a party of four made camp
after a driving rain-storm. Everybody was wet; everything
soaking. The lazy man had upset a canoe, and
all the dry clothes and blankets had just been fished
out of the river. Now the lazy man stood before the
fire, looking after his own comfort. The other three
worked like beavers, making camp. They were in
ill humor, cold, wet, hungry, irritated. They said
nothing.

A flock of chickadees came down with sunny greetings,
fearless, trustful, never obtrusive. They looked
innocently into human faces and pretended that they
did not see the irritation there. “Tsic a dee. I wish
I could help. Perhaps I can. Tic a dee-e-e?“—with
that gentle, sweetly insinuating up slide at the end.
Somebody spoke, for the first time in half an hour,
and it wasn’t a growl. Presently somebody whistled—a
wee little whistle; but the tide had turned.
Then somebody laughed. “‘Pon my word,” he said,[Pg 139]
hanging up his wet clothes, “I believe those chickadees
make me feel good-natured. Seem kind of
cheery, you know, and the crowd needed it.”

And Chickadee, picking up his cracker crumbs,
did not act at all as if he had done most to make
camp comfortable.

There is another way in which he helps, a more
material way. Millions of destructive insects live and
multiply in the buds and tender bark of trees. Other
birds never see them, but Chickadee and his relations
leave never a twig unexplored. His bright eyes find
the tiny eggs hidden under the buds; his keen ears
hear the larvæ feeding under the bark, and a blow of
his little bill uncovers them in their mischief-making.
His services of this kind are enormous, though rarely
acknowledged.

Chickadee’s nest is always neat and comfortable
and interesting, just like himself. It is a rare treat
to find it. He selects an old knot-hole, generally on
the sheltered side of a dry limb, and digs out the
rotten wood, making a deep and sometimes winding
tunnel downward. In the dry wood at the bottom he
makes a little round pocket and lines it with the
very softest material. When one finds such a nest,
with five or six white eggs delicately touched with
pink lying at the bottom, and a pair of chickadees
gliding about, half fearful, half trustful, it is altogether[Pg 140]
such a beautiful little spot that I know hardly a boy
who would be mean enough to disturb it.

One thing about the nests has always puzzled me.
The soft lining has generally more or less rabbit fur.
Sometimes, indeed, there is nothing else, and a softer
nest one could not wish to see. But where does he
get it? He would not, I am sure, pull it out of Br’er
Rabbit, as the crow sometimes pulls wool from the
sheep’s backs. Are his eyes bright enough to find it
hair by hair where the wind has blown it, down among
the leaves? If so, it must be slow work; but Chickadee
is very patient. Sometimes in spring you may
surprise him on the ground, where he never goes for
food; but at such times he is always shy, and flits up
among the birch twigs, and twitters, and goes through
an astonishing gymnastic performance, as if to distract
your attention from his former unusual one. That is
only because you are near his nest. If he has a bit
of rabbit fur in his bill meanwhile, your eyes are not
sharp enough to see it.

Once after such a performance I pretended to go
away; but I only hid in a pine thicket. Chickadee
listened awhile, then hopped down to the ground,
picked up something that I could not see, and flew
away. I have no doubt it was the lining for his nest
near by. He had dropped it when I surprised him,
so that I should not suspect him of nest-building.[Pg 141]

Such a bright, helpful little fellow should have
never an enemy in the world; and I think he has to
contend against fewer than most birds. The shrike
is his worst enemy, the swift swoop of his cruel beak
being always fatal in a flock of chickadees. Fortunately
the shrike is rare with us; one seldom finds
his nest, with poor Chickadee impaled on a sharp
thorn near by, surrounded by a varied lot of ugly
beetles. I suspect the owls sometimes hunt him at
night; but he sleeps in the thick pine shrubs, close
up against a branch, with the pine needles all about
him, making it very dark; and what with the darkness,
and the needles to stick in his eyes, the owl generally
gives up the search and hunts in more open woods.

Sometimes the hawks try to catch him, but it takes
a very quick and a very small pair of wings to follow
Chickadee. Once I was watching him hanging head
down from an oak twig to which the dead leaves were
clinging; for it was winter. Suddenly there was a
rush of air, a flash of mottled wings and fierce yellow
eyes and cruel claws. Chickadee whisked out of
sight under a leaf. The hawk passed on, brushing
his pinions. A brown feather floated down among
the oak leaves. Then Chickadee was hanging head
down, just where he was before. “Tsic a dee? Didn’t
I fool him!” he seemed to say. He had just gone
round his twig, and under a leaf, and back again; and[Pg 142]
the danger was over. When a hawk misses like that
he never strikes again.

Boys generally have a kind of sympathetic liking
for Chickadee. They may be cruel or thoughtless to
other birds, but seldom so to him. He seems somehow
like themselves.

Two barefoot boys with bows and arrows were
hunting, one September day, about the half-grown
thickets of an old pasture. The older was teaching
the younger how to shoot. A robin, a chipmunk,
and two or three sparrows were already stowed away
in their jacket pockets; a brown rabbit hung from
the older boy’s shoulder. Suddenly the younger
raised his bow and drew the arrow back to its head.
Just in front a chickadee hung and twittered among
the birch twigs. But the older boy seized his arm.

“Don’t shoot—don’t shoot him!” he said.

“But why not?”

“‘Cause you mustn’t—you must never kill a chickadee.”

And the younger, influenced more by a certain
mysterious shake of the head than by the words,
slacked his bow cheerfully; and with a last wide-eyed
look at the little gray bird that twittered and swung
so fearlessly near them, the two boys went on with
their hunting.

No one ever taught the older boy to discriminate[Pg 143]
between a chickadee and other birds; no one else
ever instructed the younger. Yet somehow both felt,
and still feel after many years, that there is a difference.
It is always so with boys. They are friends
of whatever trusts them and is fearless. Chickadee’s
own personality, his cheery ways and trustful nature
had taught them, though they knew it not. And
among all the boys of that neighborhood there is
still a law, which no man gave, of which no man
knows the origin, a law as unalterable as that of the
Medes and Persians: Never kill a chickadee.

If you ask the boy there who tells you the law,
“Why not a chickadee as well as a sparrow?” he
shakes his head as of yore, and answers dogmatically:
“‘Cause you mustn’t.”

CHICKADEE’S SECRET.

If you meet Chickadee in May with a bit of rabbit
fur in his mouth, or if he seem preoccupied or absorbed,
you may know that he is building a nest,
or has a wife and children near by to take care of.
If you know him well, you may even feel hurt that
the little friend, who shared your camp and fed from
your dish last winter, should this spring seem just as[Pg 144]
frank, yet never invite you to his camp, or should
even lead you away from it. But the soft little nest
in the old knot-hole is the one secret of Chickadee’s
life; and the little deceptions by which he tries to
keep it are at times so childlike, so transparent, that
they are even more interesting than his frankness.

One afternoon in May I was hunting, without a
gun, about an old deserted farm among the hills—one
of those sunny places that the birds love, because
some sense of the human beings who once lived there
still clings about the half wild fields and gives protection.
The day was bright and warm. The birds
were everywhere, flashing out of the pine thickets
into the birches in all the joyfulness of nest-building,
and filling the air with life and melody. It is poor
hunting to move about at such a time. Either the
hunter or his game must be still. Here the birds
were moving constantly; one might see more of them
and their ways by just keeping quiet and invisible.

I sat down on the outer edge of a pine thicket, and
became as much as possible a part of the old stump
which was my seat. Just in front an old four-rail
fence wandered across the deserted pasture, struggling
against the blackberry vines, which grew profusely
about it and seemed to be tugging at the lower rail
to pull the old fence down to ruin. On either side it
disappeared into thickets of birch and oak and pitch[Pg 145]
pine, planted, as were the blackberry vines, by birds
that stopped to rest a moment on the old fence or
to satisfy their curiosity. Stout young trees had
crowded it aside and broken it. Here and there a
leaning post was overgrown with woodbine. The
rails were gray and moss-grown. Nature was trying
hard to make it a bit of the landscape; it could
not much longer retain its individuality. The wild
things of the woods had long accepted it as theirs,
though not quite as they accepted the vines and
trees.

As I sat there a robin hurled himself upon it
from the top of a young cedar where he had been,
a moment before, practising his mating song. He
did not intend to light, but some idle curiosity, like
my own, made him pause a moment on the old gray
rail. Then a woodpecker lit on the side of a post,
and sounded it softly. But he was too near the
ground, too near his enemies to make a noise; so
he flew to a higher perch and beat a tattoo that made
the woods ring. He was safe there, and could make
as much noise as he pleased. A wood-mouse stirred
the vines and appeared for an instant on the lower
rail, then disappeared as if very much frightened at
having shown himself in the sunlight. He always
does just so at his first appearance.

Presently a red squirrel rushes out of the thicket[Pg 146]
at the left, scurries along the rails and up and down the
posts. He goes like a little red whirlwind, though he
has nothing whatever to hurry about. Just opposite my
stump he stops his rush with marvelous suddenness;
chatters, barks, scolds, tries to make me move; then
goes on and out of sight at the same breakneck rush.
A jay stops a moment in a young hickory above the
fence to whistle his curiosity, just as if he had not
seen it fifty times before. A curiosity to him never
grows old. He does not scream now; it is his nesting
time.—And so on through the afternoon. The
old fence is becoming a part of the woods; and every
wild thing that passes by stops to get acquainted.

I was weaving an idle history of the old fence,
when a chickadee twittered in the pine behind me.
As I turned, he flew over me and lit on the fence
in front. He had something in his beak; so I
watched to find his nest; for I wanted very much
to see him at work. Chickadee had never seemed
afraid of me, and I thought he would trust me now.
But he didn’t. He would not go near his nest.
Instead he began hopping about the old rail, and
pretended to be very busy hunting for insects.

Presently his mate appeared, and with a sharp note
he called her down beside him. Then both birds
hopped and twittered about the rail, with apparently
never a care in the world. The male especially[Pg 147]
seemed just in the mood for a frolic. He ran up
and down the mossy rail; he whirled about it till
he looked like a little gray pinwheel; he hung head
down by his toes, dropped, and turned like a cat, so
as to light on his feet on the rail below. While
watching his performance, I hardly noticed that his
mate had gone till she reappeared suddenly on the
rail beside him. Then he disappeared, while she
kept up the performance on the rail, with more[Pg 148]
of a twitter, perhaps, and less of gymnastics. In a
few moments both birds were together again and
flew into the pines out of sight.

I had almost forgotten them in watching other
birds, when they reappeared on the rail, ten or fifteen
minutes later, and went through a very similar performance.
This was unusual, certainly; and I sat
very quiet, very much interested, though a bit puzzled,
and a bit disappointed that they had not gone
to their nest. They had some material in their
beaks both times when they appeared on the rail,
and were now probably off hunting for more—for
rabbit fur, perhaps, in the old orchard. But what had
they done with it? “Perhaps,” I thought, “they
dropped it to deceive me.” Chickadee does that sometimes.
“But why did one bird stay on the rail?
Perhaps”—Well, I would look and see.

I left my stump as the idea struck me, and began
to examine the posts of the old fence very carefully.
Chickadee’s nest was there somewhere. In the second
post on the left I found it, a tiny knot-hole, which
Chickadee had hollowed out deep and lined with
rabbit fur. It was well hidden by the vines that
almost covered the old post, and gray moss grew all
about the entrance. A prettier nest I never found.

I went back to my stump and sat down where I
could just see the dark little hole that led to the[Pg 149]
nest. No other birds interested me now till the
chickadees came back. They were soon there, hopping
about on the rail as before, with just a wee note
of surprise in their soft twitter that I had changed
my position. This time I was not to be deceived
by a gymnastic performance, however interesting. I
kept my eyes fastened on the nest. The male was
undoubtedly going through with his most difficult
feats, and doing his best to engage my attention,
when I saw his mate glide suddenly from behind the
post and disappear into her doorway. I could hardly
be sure it was a bird. It seemed rather as if the
wind had stirred a little bundle of gray moss. Had
she moved slowly I might not have seen her, so
closely did her soft gray cloak blend with the weather-beaten
wood and the moss.

In a few moments she reappeared, waited a moment
with her tiny head just peeking out of the knot-hole,
flashed round the post out of sight, and when I saw
her again it was as she reappeared suddenly beside
the male.

Then I watched him. While his mate whisked
about the top rail he dropped to the middle one,
hopped gradually to one side, then dropped suddenly
to the lowest one, half hidden by vines, and disappeared.
I turned my eyes to the nest. In a moment
there he was—just a little gray flash, appearing for[Pg 150]
an instant from behind the post, only to disappear
into the dark entrance. When he came out again
I had but a glimpse of him till he appeared on the
rail near me beside his mate.

Their little ruse was now quite evident. They had
come back from gathering rabbit fur, and found me
unexpectedly near their nest. Instead of making a
fuss and betraying it, as other birds might do, they
lit on the rail before me, and were as sociable as only
chickadees know how to be. While one entertained
me, and kept my attention, the other dropped to the
bottom rail and stole along behind it; then up behind
the post that held their nest, and back the same way,
after leaving his material. Then he held my attention
while his mate did the same thing.

Simple as their little device was, it deceived me at
first, and would have deceived me permanently had I
not known something of chickadees’ ways, and found
the nest while they were away. Game birds have
the trick of decoying one away from their nest. I
am not sure that all birds do not have more or less of
the same instinct; but certainly none ever before or
since used it so well with me as Ch’geegee.

For two hours or more I sat there beside the pine
thicket, while the chickadees came and went. Sometimes
they approached the nest from the other side,
and I did not see them, or perhaps got only a glimpse[Pg 151]
as they glided into their doorway. Whenever they
approached from my side, they always stopped on the
rail before me and went through with their little
entertainment. Gradually they grew more confident,
and were less careful to conceal their movements
than at first. Sometimes only one came, and after
a short performance disappeared. Perhaps they
thought me harmless, or that they had deceived me
so well at first that I did not even suspect them of
nest-building. Anyway, I never pretended I knew.

As the afternoon wore away, and the sun dropped
into the pine tops, the chickadees grew hungry, and
left their work until the morrow. They were calling
among the young birch buds as I left them, busy and
sociable together, hunting their supper.

[Pg 152]

XI. A FELLOW OF EXPEDIENTS.

Among the birds there is one whose personal
appearance is rapidly changing.
He illustrates in his present life a
process well known historically to all
naturalists, viz., the modification of form
resulting from changed environment.
I refer to the golden-winged woodpecker, perhaps
the most beautifully marked bird of the North,
whose names are as varied as his habits and accomplishments.

Nature intended him to get his living, as do the
other woodpeckers, by boring into old trees and
stumps for the insects that live on the decaying
wood. For this purpose she gave him the straight,
sharp, wedge-shaped bill, just calculated for cutting
out chips; the very long horn-tipped tongue for
thrusting into the holes he makes; the peculiar
arrangement of toes, two forward and two back; and
the stiff, spiny tail-feathers for supporting himself
against the side of a tree as he works. But getting
his living so means hard work, and he has discovered[Pg 153]
for himself a much easier way. One now frequently
surprises him on the ground in old pastures and
orchards, floundering about rather awkwardly (for his
little feet were never intended for walking) after the
crickets and grasshoppers that abound there. Still
he finds the work of catching them much easier than
boring into dry old trees, and the insects themselves
much larger and more satisfactory.

A single glance will show how much this new way
of living has changed him from the other woodpeckers.
The bill is no longer straight, but has a
decided curve, like the thrushes; and instead of the
chisel-shaped edge there is a rounded point. The
red tuft on the head, which marks all the woodpecker
family, would be too conspicuous on the ground. In
its place we find a red crescent well down on the neck,
and partially hidden by the short gray feathers about
it. The point of the tongue is less horny, and from
the stiff points of the tail-feathers lamina are beginning
to grow, making them more like other birds’.
A future generation will undoubtedly wonder where
this peculiar kind of thrush got his unusual tongue
and tail, just as we wonder at the deformed little feet
and strange ways of a cuckoo.

The habits of this bird are a curious compound of
his old life in the woods and his new preference for
the open fields and farms. Sometimes the nest is in[Pg 154]
the very heart of the woods, where the bird glides in
and out, silent as a crow in nesting time. His feeding
place meanwhile may be an old pasture half a mile
away, where he calls loudly, and frolics about as if he
had never a care or a fear in the world. But the nest
is now more frequently in a wild orchard, where the
bird finds an old knot-hole and digs down through
the soft wood, making a deep nest with very little
trouble. When the knot-hole is not well situated,
he finds a large decayed limb and drills through the
outer hard shell, then digs down a foot or more
through the soft wood, and makes a nest. In this
nest the rain never troubles him, for he very providently
drills the entrance on the under side of the
limb.

Like many other birds, he has discovered that the
farmer is his friend. Occasionally, therefore, he neglects
to build a deep nest, simply hollowing out an
old knot-hole, and depending on the presence of man
for protection from hawks and owls. At such times
the bird very soon learns to recognize those who
belong in the orchard, and loses the extreme shyness
that characterizes him at all other times.

Once a farmer, knowing my interest in birds, invited
me to come and see a golden-winged woodpecker,
which in her confidence had built so shallow a nest
that she could be seen sitting on the eggs like a robin.[Pg 155]
She was so tame, he said, that in going to his work he
sometimes passed under the tree without disturbing
her. The moment we crossed the wall within sight
of the nest, the bird slipped away out of the orchard.
Wishing to test her, we withdrew and waited till she
returned. Then the farmer passed within a few feet
without disturbing her in the least. Ten minutes
later I followed him, and the bird flew away again
as I crossed the wall.

The notes of the golden-wing—much more varied
and musical than those of other woodpeckers—are
probably the results of his new free life, and the modified
tongue and bill. In the woods one seldom hears
from him anything but the rattling rat-a-tat-tat, as he
hammers away on a dry old pine stub. As a rule he
seems to do this more for the noise it makes, and the
exercise of his abilities, than because he expects to
find insects inside; except in winter time, when he
goes back to his old ways. But out in the fields he
has a variety of notes. Sometimes it is a loud kee-uk,
like the scream of a blue jay divided into two syllables,
with the accent on the last. Again it is a loud cheery
whistling call, of very short notes run close together,
with accent on every other one. Again he teeters
up and down on the end of an old fence rail with a
rollicking eekoo, eekoo, eekoo, that sounds more like a
laugh than anything else among the birds. In most[Pg 156]
of his musical efforts the golden-wing, instead of
clinging to the side of a tree, sits across the limb, like
other birds.

A curious habit which the bird has adopted with
advancing civilization is that of providing himself
with a sheltered sleeping place from the storms and
cold of winter. Late in the fall he finds a deserted
building, and after a great deal of shy inspection,
to satisfy himself that no one is within, drills a hole
through the side. He has then a comfortable place to
sleep, and an abundance of decaying wood in which
to hunt insects on stormy days. An ice-house is a
favorite location for him, the warm sawdust furnishing
a good burrowing place for a nest or sleeping
room. When a building is used as a nesting place,
the bird very cunningly drills the entrance close up
under the eaves, where it is sheltered from storms, and
at the same time out of sight of all prying eyes.

During the winter several birds often occupy one
building together. I know of one old deserted barn
where last year five of the birds lived very peaceably;
though what they were doing there in the daytime I
could never quite make out. At almost any hour of the
day, if one approached very cautiously and thumped
the side of the barn, some of the birds would dash out
in great alarm, never stopping to look behind them.
At first there were but three entrances; but after I[Pg 157]
had surprised them a few times, two more were added;
whether to get out more quickly when all were inside,
or simply for the sake of drilling the holes, I do not
know. Sometimes a pair of birds will have five or
six holes drilled, generally on the same side of the
building.

Two things about my family in the old barn aroused
my curiosity—what they were doing there by day,
and how they got out so quickly when alarmed. The
only way it seemed possible for them to dash out on
the instant, as they did, was to fly straight through.
But the holes were too small, and no bird but a bank-swallow
would have attempted such a thing.

One day I drove the birds out, then crawled in
under a sill on the opposite side, and hid in a corner
of the loft without disturbing anything inside. It was
a long wait in the stuffy old place before one of the
birds came back. I heard him light first on the roof;
then his little head appeared at one of the holes as he
sat just below, against the side of the barn, looking
and listening before coming in. Quite satisfied after
a minute or two that nobody was inside, he scrambled
in and flew down to a corner in which was a lot of
old hay and rubbish. Here he began a great rustle
and stirring about, like a squirrel in autumn leaves,
probably after insects, though it was too dark to see
just what he was doing. It sounded part of the time[Pg 158]
as if he were scratching aside the hay, much as a hen
would have done. If so, his two little front toes must
have made sad work of it, with the two hind ones
always getting doubled up in the way. When I
thumped suddenly against the side of the barn, he
hurled himself like a shot at one of the holes, alighting
just below it, and stuck there in a way that
reminded me of the chewed-paper balls that boys
used to throw against the blackboard in school. I
could hear plainly the thump of his little feet as he
struck. With the same movement, and without pausing
an instant, he dived through headlong, aided by a
spring from his tail, much as a jumping jack goes over
the head of his stick, only much more rapidly. Hardly
had he gone before another appeared, to go through
the same program.

Though much shyer than other birds of the farm,
he often ventures up close to the house and doorway
in the early morning, before any one is stirring. One
spring morning I was awakened by a strange little
pattering sound, and, opening my eyes, was astonished
to see one of these birds on the sash of the open window
within five feet of my hand. Half closing my
eyes, I kept very still and watched. Just in front of
him, on the bureau, was a stuffed golden-wing, with
wings and tail spread to show to best advantage the
beautiful plumage. He had seen it in flying by, and[Pg 159]
now stood hopping back and forth along the window
sash, uncertain whether to come in or not. Sometimes
he spread his wings as if on the point of flying in;
then he would turn his head to look curiously at me
and at the strange surroundings, and, afraid to venture
in, endeavor to attract the attention of the stuffed bird,
whose head was turned away. In the looking-glass
he saw his own movements repeated. Twice he began
his love call very softly, but cut it short, as if frightened.
The echo of the small room made it seem so different
from the same call in the open fields that I think he
doubted even his own voice.

Almost over his head, on a bracket against the wall,
was another bird, a great hawk, pitched forward on
his perch, with wings wide spread and fierce eyes
glaring downward, in the intense attitude a hawk
takes as he strikes his prey from some lofty watch
tree. The golden-wing by this time was ready to
venture in. He had leaned forward with wings spread,
looking down at me to be quite sure I was harmless,
when, turning his head for a final look round, he
caught sight of the hawk just ready to pounce down
on him. With a startled kee-uk he fairly tumbled
back off the window sash, and I caught one glimpse
of him as he dashed round the corner in full flight.

What were his impressions, I wonder, as he sat on
a limb of the old apple tree and thought it all over?[Pg 160]
Do birds have romances? How much greater wonders
had he seen than those of any romance! And
do they have any means of communicating them, as
they sing their love songs? What a wonderful story
he could tell, a real story, of a magic palace full of
strange wonders; of a glittering bit of air that made
him see himself; of a giant, all in white, with only his
head visible; of an enchanted beauty, stretching her
wings in mute supplication for some brave knight to
touch her and break the spell, while on high a fierce
dragon-hawk kept watch, ready to eat up any one who
should dare enter!

And of course none of the birds would believe him.
He would have to spend the rest of his life explaining;
and the others would only whistle, and call him Iagoo,
the lying woodpecker. On the whole, it would be
better for a bird with such a very unusual experience
to keep still about it.

[Pg 161]

XII. A TEMPERANCE LESSON FOR THE HORNETS.

Last spring a hornet, one of those long brown
double chaps that boys call mud-wasps,
crept out of his mud shell at the top of
my window casing, and buzzed in the sunshine
till I opened the window and let him
go. Perhaps he remembered his warm quarters, or
told a companion; for when the last sunny days of
October were come, there was a hornet, buzzing
persistently at the same window till it opened and
let him in.

It was a rather rickety old room, though sunny and
very pleasant, which had been used as a study by
generations of theological students. Moreover, it was
considered clean all over, like a boy with his face
washed, when the floor was swept; and no storm of
general house cleaning ever disturbed its peace. So
overhead, where the ceiling sagged from the walls,
and in dusty chinks about doors and windows that no
broom ever harried, a family of spiders, some mice, a
daddy-long-legs, two crickets, and a bluebottle fly,[Pg 162]
besides the hornet, found snug quarters in their
season, and a welcome.

The hornet stayed about, contentedly enough, for
a week or more, crawling over the window panes till
they were thoroughly explored, and occasionally taking
a look through the scattered papers on the table.
Once he sauntered up to the end of the penholder I
was using, and stayed there, balancing himself, spreading
his wings, and looking interested while the greater
part of a letter was finished. Then he crawled down
over my fingers till he wet his feet in the ink; whereupon
he buzzed off in high dudgeon to dry them in
the sun.

At first he was sociable enough, and peaceable as
one could wish; but one night, when it was chilly, he
stowed himself away to sleep under the pillow. When
I laid my head upon it, he objected to the extra weight,
and drove me ignominiously from my own bed. Another
time he crawled into a handkerchief. When I
picked it up to use it, after the light was out, he stung
me on the nose, not understanding the situation. In
whacking him off I broke one of his legs, and made
his wings all awry. After that he would have nothing
more to do with me, but kept to his own window as
long as the fine weather lasted.

When the November storms came, he went up
to a big crack in the window casing, whence he had[Pg 163]
emerged in the spring, and crept in, and went to
sleep. It was pleasant there, and at noontime, on
days when the sun shone, it streamed brightly into
his doorway, waking him out of his winter sleep. As
late as December he would come out occasionally at
midday to walk about and spread his wings in the
sun. Then a snow-storm came, and he disappeared
for two weeks.

One day, when a student was sick, a tumbler of
medicine had been carelessly left on the broad window
sill. It contained a few lumps of sugar, over
which a mixture of whiskey and glycerine had been[Pg 164]
poured. The sugar melted gradually in the sun, and
a strong odor of alcohol rose from the sticky stuff.
That and the sunshine must have roused my hornet
guest, for when I came back to the room, there he lay
by the tumbler, dead drunk.

He was stretched out on his side, one wing doubled
under him, a forward leg curled over his head, a
sleepy, boozy, perfectly ludicrous expression on his
pointed face. I poked him a bit with my finger, to
see how the alcohol affected his temper. He rose
unsteadily, staggered about, and knocked his head
against the tumbler; at which fancied insult he raised
his wings in a limp kind of dignity and defiance, buzzing
a challenge. But he lost his legs, and fell down;
and presently, in spite of pokings, went off into a
drunken sleep again.

All the afternoon he lay there. As it grew cooler
he stirred about uneasily. At dusk he started up for
his nest. It was a hard pull to get there. His head
was heavy, and his legs shaky. Half way up, he
stopped on top of the lower sash to lie down awhile.
He had a terrible headache, evidently; he kept rubbing
his head with his fore legs as if to relieve the
pain. After a fall or two on the second sash, he
reached the top, and tumbled into his warm nest to
sleep off the effects of his spree.

One such lesson should have been enough; but it[Pg 165]
wasn’t. Perhaps, also, I should have put temptation
out of his way; for I knew that all hornets, especially
yellow-jackets, are hopeless topers when they get a
chance; that when a wasp discovers a fermenting
apple, it is all up with his steady habits; that when a
nest of them discover a cider mill, all work, even the
care of the young, is neglected. They take to drinking,
and get utterly demoralized. But in the interest
of a new experiment I forgot true kindness, and left
the tumbler where it was.

The next day, at noon, he was stretched out on the
sill, drunk again. For three days he kept up his
tippling, coming out when the sun shone warmly, and
going straight to the fatal tumbler. On the fourth
day he paid the penalty of his intemperance.

The morning was very bright, and the janitor had
left the hornet’s window slightly open. At noon he
was lying on the window sill, drunk as usual. I was
in a hurry to take a train, and neglected to close the
window. Late at night, when I came back to my
room, he was gone. He was not on the sill, nor on
the floor, nor under the window cushions. His nest
in the casing, where I had so often watched him
asleep, was empty. Taking a candle, I went out to
search under the window. There I found him in the
snow, his legs curled up close to his body, frozen stiff
with the drip of the eaves.[Pg 166]

I carried him in and warmed him at the fire, but
it was too late. He had been drunk once too often.
When I saw that he was dead, I stowed him away in
the nest he had been seeking when he fell out into
the snow. I tried to read; but the book seemed dull.
Every little while I got up to look at him, lying there
with his little pointed face, still dead. At last I
wrapped him up, and pushed him farther in, out of
sight.

All the while the empty tumbler seemed to look
at me reproachfully from the window sill.

[Pg 167]

XIII. SNOWY VISITORS.

Over my table, as I write, is a
big snowy owl whose yellow
eyes seem to be always
watching me, whatever I
do. Perhaps he is still
wondering at the curious
way in which I shot him.

One stormy afternoon,
a few winters ago, I was
black-duck shooting at
sundown, by a lonely salt
creek that doubled across
the marshes from Maddaket
Harbor. In the shadow of a low ridge I had
built my blind among some bushes, near the freshest
water. In front of me a solitary decoy was splashing
about in joyous freedom after having been confined
all day, quacking loudly at the loneliness of the place
and at being separated from her mate. Beside me,
crouched in the blind, my old dog Don was trying
his best to shiver himself warm without disturbing[Pg 168]
the bushes too much. That would have frightened
the incoming ducks, as Don knew very well.

It grew dark and bitterly cold. No birds were flying,
and I had stood up a moment to let the blood
down into half-frozen toes, when a shadow seemed to
pass over my head. The next moment there was a
splash, followed by loud quacks of alarm from the
decoy. All I could make out, in the obscurity under
the ridge, was a flutter of wings that rose heavily from
the water, taking my duck with them. Only the
anchor string prevented the marauder from getting
away with his booty. Not wishing to shoot, for
the decoy was a valuable one, I shouted vigorously,
and sent out the dog. The decoy dropped with a
splash, and in the darkness the thief got away—just
vanished, like a shadow, without a sound.

Poor ducky died in my hands a few moments later,
the marks of sharp claws telling me plainly that the
thief was an owl, though I had no suspicion then
that it was the rare winter visitor from the north. I
supposed, of course, that it was only a great-horned-owl,
and so laid plans to get him.

Next night I was at the same spot with a good
duck call, and some wooden decoys, over which the
skins of wild ducks had been carefully stretched. An
hour after dark he came again, attracted, no doubt,
by the continued quacking. I had another swift[Pg 169]
glimpse of what seemed only a shadow; saw it poise
and shoot downward before I could find it with my
gun sight, striking the decoys with a great splash and
clatter. Before he discovered his mistake or could get
started again, I had him. The next moment Don
came ashore, proud as a peacock, bringing a great
snowy owl with him—a rare prize, worth ten times
the trouble we had taken to get it.

Owls are generally very lean and muscular; so
much so, in severe winters, that they are often unable
to fly straight when the wind blows; and a twenty-knot
breeze catches their broad wings and tosses
them about helplessly. This one, however, was fat
as a plover. When I stuffed him, I found that he
had just eaten a big rat and a meadow-lark, hair,
bones, feathers and all. It would be interesting to
know what he intended to do with the duck. Perhaps,
like the crow, he has snug hiding places here
and there, where he keeps things against a time of
need.

Every severe winter a few of these beautiful owls
find their way to the lonely places of the New England
coast, driven southward, no doubt, by lack of
food in the frozen north. Here in Massachusetts
they seem to prefer the southern shores of Cape Cod,
and especially the island of Nantucket, where besides
the food cast up by the tides, there are larks and[Pg 170]
blackbirds and robins, which linger more or less all
winter. At home in the far north, the owls feed
largely upon hares and grouse; here nothing comes
amiss, from a stray cat, roving too far from the house,
to stray mussels on the beach that have escaped the
sharp eyes of sea-gulls.

Some of his hunting ways are most curious. One
winter day, in prowling along the beach, I approached
the spot where a day or two before I had been shooting
whistlers (golden-eye ducks) over decoys. The
blind had been made by digging a hole in the
sand. In the bottom was an armful of dry seaweed,
to keep one’s toes warm, and just behind the stand
was the stump of a ship’s mainmast, the relic of some
old storm and shipwreck, cast up by the tide.

A commotion of some kind was going on in the
blind as I drew near. Sand and bunches of seaweed
were hurled up at intervals to be swept aside by the
wind. Instantly I dropped out of sight into the dead
beach grass to watch and listen. Soon a white head
and neck bristled up from behind the old mast, every
feather standing straight out ferociously. The head
was perfectly silent a moment, listening; then it
twisted completely round twice so as to look in every
direction. A moment later it had disappeared, and
the seaweed was flying again.

There was a prize in the old blind evidently. But[Pg 171]
what was he doing there? Till then I had supposed
that the owl always takes his game from the wing.
Farther along the beach was a sand bluff overlooking
the proceedings. I gained it after a careful stalk,
crept to the edge, and looked over. Down in the blind
a big snowy owl was digging away like a Trojan, tearing
out sand and seaweed with his great claws, first
one foot, then the other, like a hungry hen, and sending
it up in showers behind him over the old mast.
Every few moments he would stop suddenly, bristle
up all his feathers till he looked comically big and
fierce, take a look out over the log and along the
beach, then fall to digging again furiously.

I suppose that the object of this bristling up before
each observation was to strike terror into the heart of
any enemy that might be approaching to surprise him
at his unusual work. It is an owl trick. Wounded
birds always use it when approached.

And the object of the digging? That was perfectly
evident. A beach rat had jumped down into the blind,
after some fragments of lunch, undoubtedly, and being
unable to climb out, had started to tunnel up to the
surface. The owl heard him at work, and started a
stern chase. He won, too, for right in the midst of a
fury of seaweed he shot up with the rat in his claws—so
suddenly that he almost escaped me. Had it
not been for the storm and his underground digging,[Pg 172]
he surely would have heard me long before I could
get near enough to see what he was doing; for his
eyes and ears are wonderfully keen.

In his southern visits, or perhaps on the ice fields
of the Arctic ocean, he has discovered a more novel
way of procuring his food than digging for it. He
has turned fisherman and learned to fish. Once only
have I seen him get his dinner in this way. It was
on the north shore of Nantucket, one day in the winter
of 1890-91, when the remarkable flight of white
owls came down from the north. The chord of the
bay was full of floating ice, and swimming about the
shoals were thousands of coots. While watching
the latter through my field-glass, I noticed a snowy
owl standing up still and straight on the edge of a
big ice cake. “Now what is that fellow doing there?”
I thought.—”I know! He is trying to drift down
close to that flock of coots before they see him.”

That was interesting; so I sat down on a rock to
watch. Whenever I took my eyes from him a moment,
it was difficult to find him again, so perfectly did his
plumage blend with the white ice upon which he stood
motionless.

But he was not after the coots. I saw him lean
forward suddenly and plunge a foot into the water.
Then, when he hopped back from the edge, and
appeared to be eating something, it dawned upon me[Pg 173]
that he was fishing—and fishing like a true sportsman,
out on the ice alone, with only his own skill to
depend upon. In a few minutes he struck again, and
this time rose with a fine fish, which he carried to the
shore to devour at leisure.

For a long time that fish was to me the most puzzling
thing in the whole incident; for at that season
no fish are to be found, except in deep water off shore.
Some weeks later I learned that, just previous to the
incident, several fishermen’s dories, with full fares, had
been upset on the east side of the island when trying
to land through a heavy surf. The dead fish had
been carried around by the tides, and the owl had
been deceived into showing his method of fishing.
Undoubtedly, in his northern home, when the ice
breaks up and the salmon are running, he goes fishing
from an ice cake as a regular occupation.

The owl lit upon a knoll, not two hundred yards
from where I sat motionless, and gave me a good
opportunity of watching him at his meal. He treated
the fish exactly as he would have treated a rat or duck:
stood on it with one foot, gripped the long claws of
the other through it, and tore it to pieces savagely, as
one would a bit of paper. The beak was not used,
except to receive the pieces, which were conveyed up
to it by his foot, as a parrot eats. He devoured everything—fins,
tail, skin, head, and most of the bones,[Pg 174]
in great hungry mouthfuls. Then he hopped to the
top of the knoll, sat up straight, puffed out his feathers
to look big, and went to sleep. But with the first
slight movement I made to creep nearer, he was wide
awake and flew to a higher point. Such hearing is
simply marvelous.

The stomach of an owl is peculiar, there being no
intermediate crop, as in other birds. Every part of
his prey small enough (and the mouth and throat of
an owl are large out of all proportion) is greedily swallowed.
Long after the flesh is digested, feathers, fur,
and bones remain in the stomach, softened by acids,
till everything is absorbed that can afford nourishment,
even to the quill shafts, and the ends and marrow
of bones. The dry remains are then rolled into large
pellets by the stomach, and disgorged.

This, by the way, suggests the best method of finding
an owl’s haunts. It is to search, not overhead,
but on the ground under large trees, till a pile of these
little balls, of dry feathers and hair and bones, reveals
the nest or roosting place above.

It seems rather remarkable that my fisherman-owl
did not make a try at the coots that were so plenty
about him. Rarely, I think, does he attempt to strike
a bird of any kind in the daytime. His long training
at the north, where the days are several months long,
has adapted his eyes to seeing perfectly, both in [Pg 175]sunshine
and in darkness; and with us he spends the
greater part of each day hunting along the beaches.
The birds at such times are never molested. He
seems to know that he is not good at dodging; that
they are all quicker than he, and are not to be caught
napping. And the birds, even the little birds, have
no fear of him in the sunshine; though they shiver
themselves to sleep when they think of him at night.

I have seen the snowbirds twittering contentedly
near him. Once I saw him fly out to sea in the midst
of a score of gulls, which paid no attention to him. At
another time I saw him fly over a large flock of wild
ducks that were preening themselves in the grass.
He kept straight on; and the ducks, so far as I could
see, merely stopped their toilet for an instant, and
turned up one eye so as to see him better. Had it
been dusk, the whole flock would have shot up into
the air at the first startled quack—all but one, which
would have stayed with the owl.

His favorite time for hunting is the hour after dusk,
or just before daylight, when the birds are restless on
the roost. No bird is safe from him then. The fierce
eyes search through every tree and bush and bunch
of grass. The keen ears detect every faintest chirp,
or rustle, or scratching of tiny claws on the roost.
Nothing that can be called a sound escapes them.
The broad, soft wings tell no tale of his presence, and[Pg 176]
his swoop is swift and sure. He utters no sound.
Like a good Nimrod he hunts silently.

The flight of an owl, noiseless as the sweep of a
cloud shadow, is the most remarkable thing about
him. The wings are remarkably adapted to the silent
movement that is essential to surprising birds at dusk.
The feathers are long and soft. The laminæ extending
from the wing quills, instead of ending in the
sharp feather edge of other birds, are all drawn out to
fine hair points, through which the air can make no
sound as it rushes in the swift wing-beats. The whish
of a duck’s wings can be heard two or three hundred
yards on a still night. The wings of an eagle rustle
like silk in the wind as he mounts upward. A sparrow’s
wings flutter or whir as he changes his flight. Every
one knows the startled rush of a quail or grouse. But
no ear ever heard the passing of a great owl, spreading
his five-foot wings in rapid flight.

He knows well, however, when to vary his program.
Once I saw him hovering at dusk over some wild
land covered with bushes and dead grass, a favorite
winter haunt of meadow-larks. His manner showed
that he knew his game was near. He kept hovering
over a certain spot, swinging off noiselessly to right
or left, only to return again. Suddenly he struck his
wings twice over his head with a loud flap, and
swooped instantly. It was a clever trick. The bird[Pg 177]
beneath had been waked by the sound, or startled
into turning his head. With the first movement the
owl had him.

All owls have the habit of sitting still upon some
high point which harmonizes with the general color
of their feathers, and swooping upon any sound or
movement that indicates game. The long-eared, or
eagle-owl invariably selects a dark colored stub, on
top of which he appears as a part of the tree itself,
and is seldom noticed; while the snowy owl, whose
general color is soft gray, will search out a birch or
a lightning-blasted stump, and sitting up still and
straight, so hide himself in plain sight that it takes
a good eye to find him.

The swooping habit leads them into queer mistakes
sometimes. Two or three times, when sitting or
lying still in the woods watching for birds, my head
has been mistaken for a rat or squirrel, or some
other furry quadruped, by owls, which swooped and
brushed me with their wings, and once left the marks
of their claws, before discovering their mistake.

Should any boy reader ever have the good fortune
to discover one of these rare birds some winter day
in tramping along the beaches, and wish to secure
him as a specimen, let him not count on the old idea
that an owl cannot see in the daytime. On the contrary,
let him proceed exactly as he would in stalking[Pg 178]
a deer: get out of sight, and to leeward, if possible;
then take every advantage of bush and rock and
beach-grass to creep within range, taking care to
advance only when his eyes are turned away, and
remembering that his ears are keen enough to detect
the passing of a mouse in the grass from an
incredible distance.

Sometimes the crows find one of these snowy visitors
on the beach, and make a great fuss and racket,
as they always do when an owl is in sight. At such
times he takes his stand under a bank, or in the lee
of a rock, where the crows cannot trouble him from
behind, and sits watching them fiercely. Woe be to
the one that ventures too near. A plunge, a grip of
his claw, a weak caw, and it’s all over. That seems
to double the crows’ frenzy—and that is the one
moment when you can approach rapidly from behind.
But you must drop flat when the crows perceive you;
for the owl is sure to take a look around for the cause
of their sudden alarm. If he sees nothing suspicious
he will return to his shelter to eat his crow, or just to
rest his sensitive ears after all the pother. A quarter-mile
away the crows sit silent, watching you and him.

And now a curious thing happens. The crows,
that a moment ago were clamoring angrily about
their enemy, watch with a kind of intense interest as
you creep towards him. Half way to the rock behind[Pg 179]
which he is hiding, they guess your purpose, and a
low rapid chatter begins among them. One would
think that they would exult in seeing him surprised
and killed; but that is not crow nature. They would
gladly worry the owl to death if they could, but they
will not stand by and see him slain by a common
enemy. The chatter ceases suddenly. Two or three
swift fliers leave the flock, circle around you, and
speed over the rock, uttering short notes of alarm.
With the first sharp note, which all birds seem to
understand, the owl springs into the air, turns, sees
you, and is off up the beach. The crows rush after
him with crazy clamor, and speedily drive him to
cover again. But spare yourself more trouble. It
is useless to try stalking any game while the crows
are watching.

Sometimes you can drive or ride quite near to one
of these birds, the horse apparently removing all his
suspicion. But if you are on foot, take plenty of
time and care and patience, and shoot your prize on
the first stalk if possible. Once alarmed, he will lead
you a long chase, and most likely escape in the end.

I learned the wisdom of this advice in connection
with the first snowy owl I had ever met outside a
museum. I surprised him early one winter morning
eating a brant, which he had caught asleep on the
shore. He saw me, and kept making short flights[Pg 180]
from point to point in a great circle—five miles, perhaps,
and always in the open—evidently loath to
abandon his feast to the crows; while I followed with
growing wonder and respect, trying every device of
the still hunter to creep within range. That was the
same owl which I last saw at dusk, flying straight out
to sea among the gulls.

[Pg 181]

XIV.

The Christmas carol, sung by a chorus of fresh
children’s voices, is perhaps the most perfect
expression of the spirit of Christmastide. Especially
is this true of the old English and German carols,
which seem to grow only sweeter, more mellow, more
perfectly expressive of the love and good-will that
inspired them, as the years go by. Yet always at
Christmas time there is with me the memory of one
carol sweeter than all, which was sung to me alone
by a little minstrel from the far north, with the wind
in the pines humming a soft accompaniment.

Doubtless many readers have sometimes seen in
winter flocks of stranger birds—fluffy gray visitors,
almost as large as a robin—flying about the lawns
with soft whistling calls, or feeding on the ground, so
tame and fearless that they barely move aside as you[Pg 182]
approach. The beak is short and thick; the back of
the head and a large patch just above the tail are golden
brown; and across the wings are narrow double
bars of white. All the rest is soft gray, dark above and
light beneath. If you watch them on the ground, you
will see that they have a curious way of moving about
like a golden-winged woodpecker in the same position.
Sometimes they put one foot before the other, in
funny little attempt at a dignified walk, like the blackbirds;
again they hop like a robin, but much more
awkwardly, as if they were not accustomed to walking
and did not quite know how to use their feet—which
is quite true.

The birds are pine-grosbeaks, and are somewhat
irregular winter visitors from the far north. Only
when the cold is most severe, and the snow lies deep
about Hudson Bay, do they leave their nesting places
to spend a few weeks in bleak New England as a winter
resort. Their stay with us is short and uncertain.
Long ere the first bluebird has whistled to us from
the old fence rail that, if we please, spring is coming,
the grosbeaks are whistling of spring, and singing
their love songs in the forests of Labrador.

A curious thing about the flocks we see in winter
is that they are composed almost entirely of females.
The male bird is very rare with us. You can tell
him instantly by his brighter color and his beautiful[Pg 183]
crimson breast. Sometimes the flocks contain a few
young males, but until the first mating season has
tipped their breast feathers with deep crimson they
are almost indistinguishable from their sober colored
companions.

This crimson breast shield, by the way, is the family
mark or coat of arms of the grosbeaks, just as the scarlet
crest marks all the woodpeckers. And if you ask a
Micmac, deep in the woods, how the grosbeak got his
shield, he may tell you a story that will interest you
as did the legend of Hiawatha and the woodpecker
in your childhood days.

If the old male, with his proud crimson, be rare with
us, his beautiful song is still more so. Only in the
deep forests, by the lonely rivers of the far north, where
no human ear ever hears, does he greet the sunrise
from the top of some lofty spruce. There also he pours
into the ears of his sober little gray wife the sweetest
love song of the birds. It is a flood of soft warbling
notes, tinkling like a brook deep under the ice, tumbling
over each other in a quiet ecstasy of harmony;
mellow as the song of the hermit-thrush, but much
softer, as if he feared lest any should hear but her to
whom he sang. Those who know the music of the
rose-breasted grosbeak (not his robin-like song of
spring, but the exquisitely soft warble to his brooding
mate) may multiply its sweetness indefinitely,[Pg 184]
and so form an idea of what the pine-grosbeak’s
song is like.

But sometimes he forgets himself in his winter
visit, and sings as other birds do, just because his
world is bright; and then, once in a lifetime, a New
England bird lover hears him, and remembers; and
regrets for the rest of his life that the grosbeak’s
northern country life has made him so shy a visitor.

One Christmas morning, a few years ago, the new-fallen
snow lay white and pure over all the woods and
fields. It was soft and clinging as it fell on Christmas
eve. Now every old wall and fence was a carved
bench of gleaming white; every post and stub had a
soft white robe and a tall white hat; and every little
bush and thicket was a perfect fairyland of white
arches and glistening columns, and dark grottoes
walled about with delicate frostwork of silver and
jewels. And then the glory, dazzling beyond all words,
when the sun rose and shone upon it!

Before sunrise I was out. Soon the jumping flight
and cheery good-morning of a downy woodpecker led
me to an old field with scattered evergreen clumps.
There is no better time for a quiet peep at the birds
than the morning after a snow-storm, and no better
place than the evergreens. If you can find them at
all (which is not certain, for they have mysterious[Pg 185]
ways of disappearing before a storm), you will find
them unusually quiet, and willing to bear your scrutiny
indifferently, instead of flying off into deeper coverts.

I had scarcely crossed the wall when I stopped at
hearing a new bird song, so amazingly sweet that it
could only be a Christmas message, yet so out of
place that the listener stood doubting whether his
ears were playing him false, wondering whether the
music or the landscape would not suddenly vanish as
an unreal thing. The song was continuous—a soft
melodious warble, full of sweetness and suggestion;
but suggestion of June meadows and a summer sunrise,
rather than of snow-packed evergreens and
Christmastide. To add to the unreality, no ear could
tell where the song came from; its own muffled
quality disguised the source perfectly. I searched the
trees in front; there was no bird there. I looked
behind; there was no place for a bird to sing. I
remembered the redstart, how he calls sometimes
from among the rocks, and refuses to show himself,
and runs and hides when you look for him. I
searched the wall; but not a bird track marked the
snow. All the while the wonderful carol went on,
now in the air, now close beside me, growing more
and more bewildering as I listened. It took me a
good half-hour to locate the sound; then I understood.[Pg 186]

Near me was a solitary fir tree with a bushy top.
The bird, whoever he was, had gone to sleep up there,
close against the trunk, as birds do, for protection.
During the night the soft snow gathered thicker and
thicker upon the flexible branches. Their tips bent
with the weight till they touched the trunk below,
forming a green bower, about which the snow packed
all night long, till it was completely closed in. The
bird was a prisoner inside, and singing as the morning
sun shone in through the walls of his prison-house.

As I listened, delighted with the carol and the
minstrel’s novel situation, a mass of snow, loosened
by the sun, slid from the snow bower, and a pine-grosbeak
appeared in the doorway. A moment he
seemed to look about curiously over the new, white,
beautiful world; then he hopped to the topmost twig
and, turning his crimson breast to the sunrise, poured
out his morning song; no longer muffled, but sweet
and clear as a wood-thrush bell ringing the sunset.

Once, long afterward, I heard his softer love song,
and found his nest in the heart of a New Brunswick
forest. Till then it was not known that he ever built
south of Labrador. But even that, and the joy of discovery,
lacked the charm of this rare sweet carol,
coming all unsought and unexpected, as good things
do, while our own birds were spending the Christmas
time and singing the sunrise in Florida.

[Pg 187]

XV. MOOWEEN THE BEAR.

Ever since nursery times
Bruin has been largely
a creature of imagination.
He dwells there
a ferocious beast,
prowling about gloomy
woods, red eyed and dangerous,
ready to rush upon the
unwary traveler and eat him
on the spot.

Sometimes, indeed, we
have seen him out of imagination.
There he is a poor,
tired, clumsy creature, footsore
and dusty, with a halter
round his neck, and a swarthy
foreigner to make his life
miserable. At the word he
rises to his hind legs, hunches his shoulders, and lunges
awkwardly round in a circle, while the foreigner sings
Horry, horry, dum-dum, and his wife passes the hat.[Pg 188]

We children pity the bear, as we watch, and forget
the other animal that frightens us when near the
woods at night. But he passes on at last, with a
troop of boys following to the town limits. Next day
Bruin comes back, and lives in imagination as ugly
and frightful as ever.

But Mooween the Bear, as the northern Indians
call him, the animal that lives up in the woods of
Maine and Canada, is a very different kind of creature.
He is big and glossy black, with long white teeth
and sharp black claws, like the imagination bear.
Unlike him, however, he is shy and wild, and timid as
any rabbit. When you camp in the wilderness at
night, the rabbit will come out of his form in the
ferns to pull at your shoe, or nibble a hole in the salt
bag, while you sleep. He will play twenty pranks
under your very eyes. But if you would see Mooween,
you must camp many summers, and tramp many a
weary mile through the big forests before catching a
glimpse of him, or seeing any trace save the deep
tracks, like a barefoot boy’s, left in some soft bit of
earth in his hurried flight.

Mooween’s ears are quick, and his nose very keen.
The slightest warning from either will generally send
him off to the densest cover or the roughest hillside
in the neighborhood. Silently as a black shadow he
glides away, if he has detected your approach from a[Pg 189]
distance. But if surprised and frightened, he dashes
headlong through the brush with crash of branches,
and bump of fallen logs, and volleys of dirt and dead
wood flung out behind him as he digs his toes into
the hillside in his frantic haste to be away.

In the first startled instant of such an encounter,
one thinks there must be twenty bears scrambling up
the hill. And if you should perchance get a glimpse
of the game, you will be conscious chiefly of a funny
little pair of wrinkled black feet, turned up at you so
rapidly that they actually seem to twinkle through a
cloud of flying loose stuff.

That was the way in which I first met Mooween.
He was feeding peaceably on blueberries, just stuffing
himself with the ripe fruit that tinged with blue a
burned hillside, when I came round the turn of a deer
path. There he was, the mighty, ferocious beast—and
my only weapon a trout-rod!

We discovered each other at the same instant.
Words can hardly measure the mutual consternation.
I felt scared; and in a moment it flashed upon me
that he looked so. This last observation was like a
breath of inspiration. It led me to make a demonstration
before he should regain his wits. I jumped
forward with a flourish, and threw my hat at him.—

Boo! said I.

Hoof, woof! said Mooween. And away he went[Pg 190]
up the hill in a desperate scramble, with loose stones
rattling, and the bottoms of his feet showing constantly
through the volley of dirt and chips flung out
behind him.

That killed the fierce imagination bear of childhood
days deader than any bullet could have done, and
convinced me that Mooween is at heart a timid creature.
Still, this was a young bear, as was also one
other upon whom I tried the same experiment, with
the same result. Had he been older and bigger, it
might have been different. In that case I have found
that a good rule is to go your own way unobtrusively,
leaving Mooween to his devices. All animals,
whether wild or domestic, respect a man who neither
fears nor disturbs them.

Mooween’s eyes are his weak point. They are
close together, and seem to focus on the ground a few
feet in front of his nose. At twenty yards to leeward
he can never tell you from a stump or a caribou,
should you chance to be standing still.

If fortunate enough to find the ridge where he
sleeps away the long summer days, one is almost sure
to get a glimpse of him by watching on the lake
below. It is necessary only to sit perfectly still in
your canoe among the water-grasses near shore.
When near a lake, a bear will almost invariably come
down about noontime to sniff carefully all about, and[Pg 191]
lap the water, and perhaps find a dead fish before
going back for his afternoon sleep.

Four or five times I have sat thus in my canoe
while Mooween passed close by, and never suspected
my presence till a chirp drew his attention. It is
curious at such times, when there is no wind to bring
the scent to his keen nose, to see him turn his head to
one side, and wrinkle his forehead in the vain endeavor
to make out the curious object there in the grass. At
last he rises on his hind legs, and stares long and
intently. It seems as if he must recognize you, with
his nose pointing straight at you, his eyes looking
straight into yours. But he drops on all fours again,
and glides silently into the thick bushes that fringe
the shore.

Don’t stir now, nor make the least sound. He
is in there, just out of sight, sitting on his haunches,
using nose and ears to catch your slightest message.

Ten minutes pass by in intense silence. Down on
the shore, fifty yards below, a slight swaying of the
bilberry bushes catches your eye. That surely is not
the bear! There has not been a sound since he disappeared.
A squirrel could hardly creep through that
underbrush without noise enough to tell where he
was. But the bushes sway again, and Mooween reappears
suddenly for another long look at the suspicious
object. Then he turns and plods his way along[Pg 192]
shore, rolling his head from side to side as if completely
mystified.

Now swing your canoe well out into the lake, and
head him off on the point, a quarter of a mile below.
Hold the canoe quiet just outside the lily pads by
grasping a few tough stems, and sit low. This time
the big object catches Mooween’s eye as he rounds
the point; and you have only to sit still to see him
go through the same maneuvers with greater mystification
than before.

Once, however, he varied his program, and gave
me a terrible start, letting me know for a moment
just how it feels to be hunted, at the same time
showing with what marvelous stillness he can glide
through the thickest cover when he chooses.

It was early evening on a forest lake. The water
lay like a great mirror, with the sunset splendor still
upon it. The hush of twilight was over the wilderness.
Only the hermit-thrushes sang wild and sweet
from a hundred dead spruce tops.

I was drifting about, partly in the hope to meet
Mooween, whose tracks were very numerous at the
lower end of the lake, when I heard him walking in
the shallow water. Through the glass I made him
out against the shore, as he plodded along in my
direction.

I had long been curious to know how near a bear[Pg 193]
would come to a man without discovering him. Here
was an opportunity. The wind at sunset had been
in my favor; now there was not the faintest breath
stirring.

Hiding the canoe, I sat down in the sand on a
little point, where dense bushes grew down to within
a few feet of the water’s edge. Head and shoulders
were in plain sight above the water-grass. My intentions
were wholly peaceable, notwithstanding the rifle
that lay across my knees. It was near the mating
season, when Mooween’s temper is often dangerous;
and one felt much more comfortable with the chill of
the cold iron in his hands.

Mooween came rapidly along the shore meanwhile,
evidently anxious to reach the other end of the lake.
In the mating season bears use the margins of lakes
and streams as natural highways. As he drew nearer
and nearer I gazed with a kind of fascination at the
big unconscious brute. He carried his head low, and
dropped his feet with a heavy splash into the shallow
water.

At twenty yards he stopped as if struck, with head
up and one paw lifted, sniffing suspiciously. Even
then he did not see me, though only the open shore
lay between us. He did not use his eyes at all, but
laid his great head back on his shoulders and sniffed
in every direction, rocking his brown muzzle up and[Pg 194]
down the while, so as to take in every atom from
the tainted air.

A few slow careful steps forward, and he stopped
again, looked straight into my eyes, then beyond me
towards the lake, all the while sniffing. I was still
only part of the shore. Yet he was so near that I
caught the gleam of his eyes, and saw the nostrils
swell and the muzzle twitch nervously.

Another step or two, and he planted his fore feet
firmly. The long hairs began to rise along his spine,
and under his wrinkled chops was a flash of white
teeth. Still he had no suspicion of the motionless
object there in the grass. He looked rather out on
the lake. Then he glided into the brush and was
lost to sight and hearing.

He was so close that I scarcely dared breathe as I
waited, expecting him to come out farther down the
shore. Five minutes passed without the slightest
sound to indicate his whereabouts, though I was
listening intently in the dead hush that was on the
lake. All the while I smelled him strongly. One
can smell a bear almost as far as he can a deer, though
the scent does not cling so long to the underbrush.

A bush swayed slightly below where he had disappeared.
I was watching it closely when some
sudden warning—I know not what, for I did not
hear but only felt it—made me turn my head quickly.[Pg 195]
There, not six feet away, a huge head and shoulders
were thrust out of the bushes on the bank, and a pair
of gleaming eyes were peering intently down upon
me in the grass. He had been watching me at arm’s
length probably two or three minutes. Had a muscle
moved in all that time, I have no doubt that he would
have sprung upon me. As it was, who can say what
was passing behind that curious, half-puzzled, half-savage
gleam in his eyes?

He drew quickly back as a sudden movement on
my part threw the rifle into position. A few minutes
later I heard the snap of a rotten twig some distance
away. Not another sound told of his presence till he
broke out onto the shore, fifty yards above, and went
steadily on his way up the lake.

Mooween is something of a humorist in his own
way. When not hungry he will go out of his way to
frighten a bullfrog away from his sun-bath on the
shore, for no other purpose, evidently, than just to see
him jump. Watching him thus amusing himself one
afternoon, I was immensely entertained by seeing him
turn his head to one side, and wrinkle his eyebrows,
as each successive frog said ke’dunk, and went splashing
away over the lily pads.

A pair of cubs are playful as young foxes, while
their extreme awkwardness makes them a dozen times[Pg 196]
more comical. Simmo, my Indian guide, tells me that
the cubs will sometimes run away and hide when
they hear the mother bear returning. No amount of
coaxing or of anxious fear on her part will bring them
back, till she searches diligently to find them.

Once only have I had opportunity to see the young
at play. There were two of them, nearly full-grown,
with the mother. The most curious thing was to see
them stand up on their hind legs and cuff each other
soundly, striking and warding like trained boxers.
Then they would lock arms and wrestle desperately
till one was thrown, when the other promptly seized
him by throat or paw, and pretended to growl frightfully.

They were well fed, evidently, and full of good
spirits as two boys. But the mother was cross and
out of sorts. She kept moving about uneasily, as if
the rough play irritated her nerves. Occasionally, as
she sat for a moment with hind legs stretched out
flat and fore paws planted between them, one of the
cubs would approach and attempt some monkey play.
A sound cuff on the ear invariably sent him whimpering
back to his companion, who looked droll enough
the while, sitting with his tongue out and his head
wagging humorously as he watched the experiment.
It was getting toward the time of year when she
would mate again, and send them off into the world[Pg 197]
to shift for themselves. And this was perhaps their
first hard discipline.

Once also I caught an old bear enjoying himself
in a curious way. It was one intensely hot day, in
the heart of a New Brunswick wilderness. Mooween
came out onto the lake shore and lumbered along,
twisting uneasily and rolling his head as if very much
distressed by the heat. I followed silently close behind
in my canoe.

Soon he came to a cool spot under the alders,
which was probably what he was looking for. A
small brook made an eddy there, and a lot of driftweed
had collected over a bed of soft black mud.
The stump of a huge cedar leaned out over it, some
four or five feet above the water.

First he waded in to try the temperature. Then
he came out and climbed the cedar stump, where he
sniffed in every direction, as is his wont before lying
down. Satisfied at last, he balanced himself carefully
and gave a big jump—Oh, so awkwardly!—with legs
out flat, and paws up, and mouth open as if he were
laughing at himself. Down he came, souse, with a
tremendous splash that sent mud and water flying in
every direction. And with a deep uff-guff of pure
delight, he settled himself in his cool bed for a comfortable
nap.

In his fondness for fish, Mooween has discovered an[Pg 198]
interesting way of catching them. In June and July
immense numbers of trout and salmon run up the
wilderness rivers on their way to the spawning
grounds. Here and there, on small streams, are
shallow riffles, where large fish are often half out of
water as they struggle up. On one of these riffles
Mooween stations himself during the first bright
moonlight nights of June, when the run of fish is
largest on account of the higher tides at the river
mouth. And Mooween knows, as well as any other
fisherman, the kind of night on which to go fishing.
He knows also the virtue of keeping still. As a big
salmon struggles by, Mooween slips a paw under him,
tosses him to the shore by a dexterous flip, and springs
after him before he can flounder back.

When hungry, Mooween has as many devices as a
fox for getting a meal. He tries flipping frogs from
among the lily pads in the same way that he catches
salmon. That failing, he takes to creeping through
the water-grass, like a mink, and striking his game
dead with a blow of his paw.

Or he finds a porcupine loafing through the woods,
and follows him about to throw dirt and stones at
him, carefully refraining from touching him the while,
till the porcupine rolls himself into a ball of bristling
quills,—his usual method of defense. Mooween
slips a paw under him, flips him against a tree to stun[Pg 199]
him, and bites him in the belly, where there are no
quills. If he spies the porcupine in a tree, he will
climb up, if he is a young bear, and try to shake him
off. But he soon learns better, and saves his strength
for more fruitful exertions.

Mooween goes to the lumber camps regularly after
his winter sleep and, breaking in through door or
roof, helps himself to what he finds. If there happens
to be a barrel of pork there, he will roll it into the
open air, if the door is wide enough, before breaking
in the head with a blow of his paw.

Should he find a barrel of molasses among the
stores, his joy is unbounded. The head is broken in
on the instant and Mooween eats till he is surfeited.
Then he lies down and rolls in the sticky sweet, to
prolong the pleasure; and stays in the neighborhood
till every drop has been lapped up.

Lumbermen have long since learned of his strength
and cunning in breaking into their strong camps.
When valuable stores are left in the woods, they are
put into special camps, called bear camps, where doors
and roofs are fastened with chains and ingenious log
locks to keep Mooween out.

Near the settlements Mooween speedily locates the
sweet apple trees among the orchards. These he
climbs by night, and shakes off enough apples to last
him for several visits. Every kind of domestic animal[Pg 200]
is game for him. He will lie at the edge of a clearing
for hours, with the patience of a cat, waiting for turkey
or sheep or pig to come within range of his swift rush.

His fondness for honey is well known. When he
has discovered a rotten tree in which wild bees have
hidden their store, he will claw at the bottom till it
falls. Curling one paw under the log he sinks the
claws deep into the wood. The other paw grips the
log opposite the first, and a single wrench lays it open.
The clouds of angry insects about his head meanwhile
are as little regarded as so many flies. He knows the
thickness of his skin, and they know it. When the
honey is at last exposed, and begins to disappear in
great hungry mouthfuls, the bees also fall upon it, to
gorge themselves with the fruit of their hard labor
before Mooween shall have eaten it all.

Everything eatable in the woods ministers at times
to Mooween’s need. Nuts and berries are favorite
dishes in their season. When these and other delicacies
fail, he knows where to dig for edible roots. A
big caribou, wandering near his hiding place, is pulled
down and stunned by a blow on the head. Then,
when the meat has lost its freshness, he will hunt for
an hour after a wood-mouse he has seen run under a
stone, or pull a rotten log to pieces for the ants and
larvæ concealed within.

These last are favorite dishes with him. In a[Pg 201]
burned district, where ants and berries abound, one is
continually finding charred logs, in which the ants
nest by thousands, split open from end to end. A
few strong claw marks, and the lick of a moist tongue
here and there, explain the matter. It shows the
extremes of Mooween’s taste. Next to honey he
prefers red ants, which are sour as pickles.

Mooween is even more expert as a boxer than as a
fisherman. When the skin is stripped from his fore
arms, they are seen to be of great size, with muscles
as firm to the touch as so much rubber. Long practice
has made him immensely strong, and quick as a
flash to ward and strike. Woe be to the luckless dog,
however large, that ventures in the excitement of the
hunt within reach of his paw. A single swift stroke
will generally put the poor brute out of the hunt
forever.

Once Simmo caught a bear by the hind leg in a
steel trap. It was a young bear, a two-year-old; and
Simmo thought to save his precious powder by killing
it with a club. He cut a heavy maple stick and,
swinging it high above his head, advanced to the trap.
Mooween rose to his hind legs, and looked him steadily
in the eye, like the trained boxer that he is. Down
came the club with a sweep to have felled an ox.
There was a flash from Mooween’s paw; the club
spun away into the woods; and Simmo just escaped[Pg 202]
a fearful return blow by dropping to the ground and
rolling out of reach, leaving his cap in Mooween’s
claws. A wink later, and his scalp would have hung
there instead.

In the mating season, when three or four bears
often roam the woods together in fighting humor,
Mooween uses a curious kind of challenge. Rising
on his hind legs against a big fir or spruce, he tears
the bark with his claws as high as he can reach on
either side. Then placing his back against the trunk,
he turns his head and bites into the tree with his long
canine teeth, tearing out a mouthful of the wood. That
is to let all rivals know just how big a bear he is.

The next bear that comes along, seeking perhaps
to win the mate of his rival and following her trail,
sees the challenge and measures his height and reach
in the same way, against the same tree. If he can
bite as high, or higher, he keeps on, and a terrible
fight is sure to follow. But if, with his best endeavors,
his marks fall short of the deep scars above, he prudently
withdraws, and leaves it to a bigger bear to
risk an encounter.

In the wilderness one occasionally finds a tree on
which three or four bears have thus left their challenge.
Sometimes all the bears in a neighborhood
seem to have left their records in the same place. I
remember well one such tree, a big fir, by a lonely[Pg 203]
little beaver pond, where the separate challenges had
become indistinguishable on the torn bark. The
freshest marks here were those of a long-limbed old
ranger—a monster he must have been—with a clear
reach of a foot above his nearest rival. Evidently no
other bear had cared to try after such a record.

Once, in the mating season, I discovered quite by
accident that Mooween can be called, like a hawk or
a moose, or indeed any other wild creature, if one
but knows how. It was in New Brunswick, where I
was camped on a wild forest river. At midnight I was
back at a little opening in the woods, watching some
hares at play in the bright moonlight. When they
had run away, I called a wood-mouse out from his den
under a stump; and then a big brown owl from across
the river—which almost scared the life out of my poor
little wood-mouse. Suddenly a strange cry sounded
far back on the mountain. I listened curiously, then
imitated the cry, in the hope of hearing it again and
of remembering it; for I had never before heard anything
like the sound, and had no idea what creature
produced it. There was no response, however, and I
speedily grew interested in the owls; for by this time
two or three more were hooting about me, all called
in by the first comer. When they had gone I tried
the strange call again. Instantly it was answered
close at hand. The creature was coming.[Pg 204]

I stole out into the middle of the opening, and sat
very still on a fallen log. Ten minutes passed in
intense silence. Then a twig snapped behind me.
I turned—and there was Mooween, just coming into
the opening. I shall not soon forget how he looked,
standing there big and black in the moonlight; nor
the growl deep down in his throat, that grew deeper
as he watched me. We looked straight into each
other’s eyes a brief, uncertain moment. Then he
drew back silently into the dense shadow.

There is another side to Mooween’s character,
fortunately a rare one, which is sometimes evident
in the mating season, when his temper leads him to
attack instead of running away, as usual; or when
wounded, or cornered, or roused to frenzy in defense
of the young. Mooween is then a beast to be dreaded,
a great savage brute, possessed of enormous strength
and of a fiend’s cunning. I have followed him wounded
through the wilderness, when his every resting place
was scarred with deep gashes, and where broken saplings
testified mutely to the force of his blow. Yet
even here his natural timidity lies close to the surface,
and his ferocity has been greatly exaggerated by
hunters.

Altogether, Mooween the Bear is a peaceable fellow,
and an interesting one, well worth studying. His
extreme wariness, however, enables him generally to[Pg 205]
escape observation; and there are undoubtedly many
queer ways of his yet to be discovered by some one
who, instead of trying to scare the life out of him by
a shout or a rifle-shot in the rare moments when he
shows himself, will have the patience to creep near,
and find out just what he is doing. Only in the
deepest wilderness is he natural and unconscious.
There he roams about, entirely alone for the most
part, supplying his numerous wants, and performing
droll capers with all the gravity of an owl, when he
thinks that not even Tookhees, the wood-mouse, is
looking.