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 mustbe 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 ofhaw-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 andhaw-hawin 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 objectfurnishes 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 goscreaming 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 fallingwith 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 andhawingabout 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 itfrequently 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 andcawedexcitedly. 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. Thehawingwas 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 theirnumber. The crow's chief note is the hoarsehaw, hawwith 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,hawingvigorously, 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 thevery 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 crowshawedin 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 thetoo-loo-looof 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,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 callingrascal, 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 onesaw 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 cryingwolf, 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 crowshawingaway 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,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, theall's wellof 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.
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 likea 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.
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 muchhawing. 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 itis 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 derisivehawannounced 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 provedto 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.
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 walksin 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 representativesof 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 ofbushes 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.
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,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! Downin 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 tiredsilence, 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 wordmoosetogether, 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. Moonlightis 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 notbeen 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 expertcaller. 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 amanmight 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, ranswiftly 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,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 bigtrumpet-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 northernwilderness. 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 believedtheir 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,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 trampingthrough 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.
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 grimfaces 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 onthe 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,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,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 altogethersuch 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.
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; andthe 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 discriminatebetween 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 asfrank, 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 pitchpine, 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 thicketat 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 especiallyseemed 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 moreof 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 thenest. 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 foran 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 glimpseas 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.