Chapter 10
The ideal place for birds, says Mr. Frank Chapman, is the edge of the wood where field and forest meet, and a stream is not far off. If an orchard be in sight, so much the better. It was my delight to spend a summer, or part of it, in just such a spot not long ago, and I made many charming discoveries here. In the first place I learned that it is by no means necessary for birds to be of a feather in order to flock together. I came one bright morning on a flock of indigo buntings near the water's edge, the proud father in exquisite blue, like finest silk, with shimmering lights of green playing over it,
the mother in sienna brown, and the babies, neither blue nor brown, but a sooty black, with only a solitary wee feather now and then to show the blue that was coming. What an odd, but what a pretty, happy little family. the banks of the stream were thickly overgrown with milk-white elder orange butterfly weed and a thousand feathery grasses and nodding leaf sprays already touched on edge with crimson or gold thumb marks On the tall stalks swung the goldfinches, a little yellow streak of laughter in the sun,
and every stake or post in the fence nearby made a coin of vantage for the merry wrens to call and whistle. The calls of birds express, bird fashion, every feeling that the heart of man knows, surprise, fear, joy, hope, love, hate, and sorrow. If we could only contrive to think bird thoughts, as perhaps an Audubon may have done, or a Wilson, we might understand these strange signals and cries, often uttered by invisible speakers,
from a world above ours. I learned at this time that the quails, or bobwhites, have many calls, instead of the one from which they are named. There is the low, sweet mother-talk to the brood, the notes of warning, the scatter-calls of autumn from the survivors of an attack, where are you, where are you, and a sort of duet between male and female at nesting time. When she leaves the nest, she calls,
Lou-ee-see, and he strikes in on the last syllable with, Bob. She repeats, and he bursts forth, Bob White, with emphasis. Then the clear, ringing whistles through midsummer sound up and down the meadow from one quail to another. The old farmer interprets their colloquy thus, Bob white, bob white, peas ripe, peas ripe, not quite, not quite.
These birds are very tame during the spring and fall, and will come into town on the edges of the streets and call from roof and doorstep without fear. sometimes even mounting into a tree close beside a window and whistling for an hour or two. On the contrary, it is by the edge of the wood and after the brood is reared that treetop birds, like tanagers and cardinals, grow most friendly and fearless. Frequently, when I raised my glasses
to look at some plain brown or gray bird, the scarlet of a tanager would flash across the field, and the rose glow of the cardinals appear in the grass. The female cardinal, with her lovely fawn tints and rose linings, and her beautiful voice, equals the male in interest. She is a bird of lively emotions, and being rebuffed by a catbird one day, made the lawn ring with her aggrieved cries, while her mate sought to comfort her most tenderly. They are not graceful on the
ground, but they have a stout air of proprietorship that is not unpleasing. Both of our tanagers, the Summer and Scarlet, the Cardinals, and the Brilliant Orioles, live together very peaceably, nor have I seen any sign of envy, malice, or spite among them. I suppose each one of us has his own Arcadia. Mine, and that of these winged neighbors, assuredly lies at the boundary line between shadowy forest and sunny meadow, at the edge of the wood.
