A Bird-Lover in the West Part 3

Then I made haste to seek out an obscure spot, where I could sit and wait in silence, to see who might unwittingly show himself.

I was never lonely, and never tired; for if--as sometimes happened--no flit of wing came near to interest me, there before me was beautiful Cheyenne, with its changing face never twice alike, and its undying a.s.sociations with its poet and lover, whose lonely grave makes it forever sacred to those who loved her. There, too, was the wonderful sky of Colorado, so blue it looked almost violet, and near at hand the "Singing Water," whose stirring music was always inspiring.

One morning I was startled from my reverie by a sudden cry, so loud and clear that I turned quickly to see what manner of bird had uttered it.

The voice was peculiar and entirely new to me. First came a scolding note like that of an oriole, then the "chack" of a blackbird, and next a sweet, clear whistle, one following the other rapidly and vehemently, as if the performer intended to display all his accomplishments in a breath. Cheyenne vanished like "the magic mountain of a dream," blue skies were forgotten, the babbling brook unheard, every sense was instantly alert to see that extraordinary bird,--

"Like a poet hidden, Singing songs unbidden."

But he did not appear. Not a leaf rustled, not a twig bent, though the strange medley kept on for fifteen minutes, then ceased as abruptly as it had begun, and not a whisper more could be heard. The whole thing seemed uncanny. Was it a bird at all, or a mere "wandering voice"? It seemed to come from a piece of rather swampy ground, overgrown with clumps of willow and low shrubs; but what bird of earthly mould could come and go, and make no sign that a close student of bird ways could detect? Did he creep on the ground? Did he vanish into thin air?

Hours went by. I could not go, and my leafy nook was "struck through with slanted shafts of afternoon" before I reluctantly gave up that I should not see my enchanter that day, and slowly left the grove, the mystery unexplained.

Very early the next morning I was saluted by the same loud, clear calls near the house. Had then the Invisible followed me home? I sprang up and hurried to the always open window. The voice was very near; but I could not see its author, though I was hidden behind blinds.

This time the bird--if bird it were--indulged in a fuller _repertoire_.

I seized pencil and paper, and noted down phonetically the different notes as they were uttered. This is the record: "Rat-t-t-t-t" (very rapid); "quit! quit! quit!" (a little slower); "wh-eu! wh-eu!" (still more deliberately); "chack! chack! chack!" (quite slow); "cre, cre, cre, cre" (fast); "hu-way! hu-way!" (very sweet). There was a still more musical clause that I cannot put into syllables, then a rattle exactly like castanets, and lastly a sort of "Kr-r-r! kr-r-r!" in the tone of a great-crested flycatcher. While this will not express to one who has not heard it the marvelous charm of it all, it will at least indicate the variety.

Hardly waiting to dispose of breakfast, I betook myself to my "woodland enchanted," resolved to stay till I saw that bird.

"All day in the bushes The woodland was haunted."

The voice was soon on hand, and once more I was treated to the incomparable recitative.

This day, too, my patience was rewarded; the mystery was solved; I saw the Unknown! While my eyes were fixed upon a certain bush before me, the singer incautiously ventured too near the top of a twig, and I saw him plainly, standing almost upright, and vehemently chanting his fantasia, opening his mouth very wide with every call. I knew him at once, the rogue! from having read of him; he was the yellow-breasted chat. It was well, indeed, that I happened to be looking at that very spot, and that I was quick in my observation; for in a moment he saw the blunder he had made, and slipped back down the stem, too late for his secret--I had him down in black and white.

From that time the little park was never lonely, nor did I spend much time dreaming over Cheyenne. The moment I appeared in the morning my lively host began his vocal gymnastics, while I sat spellbound, bewitched by the magic of his notes. In spite of being absorbed in listening to him, I retained my faculties sufficiently to reflect that the chat had probably other employment than entertaining me, and that doubtless his object was to distract my attention from looking about me, or to reproach me for intruding upon his private domain. In either case there was, of course,

"A nest unseen Somewhere among the million stalks;"

and, delightful as I found the unseen bird, his nest was a treasure I was even more anxious to see.

Not to disturb him more than necessary, I spent part of an evening studying up the nesting habits of the chat,--the long-tailed, yellow-breasted, as I found him to be,--and the next morning made a thorough search through the swamp, looking into every bush and examining every thicket. An hour or two of this hard work satisfied me for the day, and I went home warm and tired, followed to the very door by the mocking voice, triumphing, as it seemed, in my failure.

The next day, however, fortune smiled upon me; I came upon a nest, not far above the ground, among the stems of a clump of shrubs, which exactly answered the description of the one I sought. Careful not to lay a finger on it, I slightly parted the branches above, and looked in upon three pinkish-white eggs, small in size and dainty as tinted pearls.

Happy day, I thought, and the forerunner of happy to-morrows when I should watch

"The green nest full of pleasant shade Wherein three speckled eggs were laid,"

and see and delight in the family life centring about it.

To study a bird so shy required extraordinary precautions; I therefore sought, and found, a post of observation a long way off, where I could look through a natural vista among the shrubs, and with my gla.s.s bring the bush and its precious contents into view. For greater seclusion in my retreat, so that I should be as little conspicuous as possible, I drew down a branch of the low tree over my seat, and fastened it with a fine string to a stout weed below. Then I thought I had a perfect screen; I devoutly hoped the birds would not notice me.

Vain delusion! and labor as vain! Doubtless two pairs of anxious eyes watched from some neighboring bush all my careful preparations, and then and there two despairing hearts bade farewell to their lovely little home, abandoned it and its treasures to the spy and the destroyer, which in their eyes I seemed to be.

This conclusion was forced upon me by the experiences of the next few days. The birds absolutely would not approach the nest while I was in the park. The first morning I sat motionless for nearly two hours, and not a feather showed itself near that bush; it was plainly "tabooed."

During the next day the chat called from this side and that, moving about in his wonderful way, without disturbing a twig, rustling a leaf, or flitting a wing--as silently, indeed, as if he were a spirit unclothed.

While waiting for him to show himself, making myself as nearly a part of nature about me as a mortal is gifted to do, I congratulated myself upon the one good look I had secured, for, with all my efforts and all my watching, I saw him but twice more all summer. The enigma of that remarkable voice would have been maddening indeed, if I could not have known to whom it belonged.

After several days of untiring observation I had but two glimpses to record. On one occasion a chat alighted on the top sprig of the fateful shrub, as if going to the nest, but almost on the instant vanished. The same day, a little later, one of these birds flitted into my view, without a sound. So perfectly silent were his movements that I should not have seen him if he had not come directly before my eyes. He, or she, for the pair are alike, alighted in a low bush and scrambled about as if in search of insects, climbing, not hopping. He stayed but a few seconds and departed like a shadow, as he had come.

On the tenth day after my discovery of the nest with its trio of eggs I went out as usual, for I could not abandon hope. In pa.s.sing the nest I glanced in and saw one egg; I could never see but one as I went by, but, not liking to go too near, I presumed that the other two were there, as I had always found them, and slipped quietly into my usual place.

In a few moments the chat shouted a call so near that it fairly startled me. From that he went on to make his ordinary protest, but, as happened nearly every time, I was not able to see him. I saw something--something that took my breath away. A shadowy form creeping stealthily through the shrubs five or six feet from me. It glided across the opening in front, and in a moment went to the bush I was watching. In silence, but with evident excitement, it moved about, approached the nest, and in a few seconds flew quickly across the path in plain sight, holding in its mouth something white which was large for its beak. I was reminded of an English sparrow carrying a piece of bread as big as his head, a sight familiar to every one. In a minute or two the same bird, or his twin, came to the nest again and disappeared on the other side.

When I left my place to go home, I looked with misgivings into the nest on which I had built so many hopes. Lo! it was empty!

Now I identified that stealthy visitor absolutely, but I shall never name him. I have never heard him accused of nest-robbing, and I shall not make the charge; for I am convinced that the chat had deserted the nest, and that this abstracter of eggs knew it, and simply took the good things the G.o.ds threw in his way--as would the best of us.

After that unfortunate ending the chat disappeared from the little park; but a week later I came upon him, or his voice, in a private and rarely visited pasture down the road, where many clumps of small trees and much low growth offered desirable nesting-places. He made his usual protest, and feeling that I had been the cause of the tragedy of the first nest, though I had grieved over it as much as the owners could, the least I could do, to show my regret, was to take myself and my curiosity out of his neighborhood. So I retired at once, and left the whole broad pasture to the incorrigible chat family, who, I hope, succeeded at last in enriching the world by half a dozen more of their bewitching kind.

V.

A FEAST OF FLOWERS.

When first the crocus thrusts its point of gold Up through the still snow-drifted garden mould, And folded green things in dim woods unclose Their crinkled spears, a sudden tremor goes Into my veins and makes me kith and kin To every wild-born thing that thrills and blows.

T. B. ALDRICH.

My feast of flowers began before I entered Colorado. For half the breadth of Kansas the banks of the railroad were heavenly blue with cl.u.s.tered blossoms of the spiderwort. I remember clumps of this flower in my grandmother's old-fas.h.i.+oned garden, but my wildest dreams never pictured miles of it, so profuse that, looking backward from the train, the track looked like threads of steel in a broad ribbon of blue.

Through the same State, also, the Western meadow-larks kept us company, and I shall never again think of "bleeding Kansas," but of smiling Kansas, the home of the bluest of blossoms and the sweetest of singers.

The latter half of the way through the smiling State was golden with yellow daisies in equal abundance, and beside them many other flowers.

Beginning at noon, I counted twenty-seven varieties, so near the track that I could distinguish them as we rushed past.

The Santa Fe road enters Colorado in a peculiarly desolate region.

Flowers and birds appear to have stayed behind in Kansas, and no green thing shows its head, excepting one dismal-looking bush, which serves only to accentuate the poverty of the soil. As we go on, the mud is replaced by sand and stones, from gravel up to big bowlders, and flowers begin to struggle up through the unpromising ground.

Nothing is more surprising than the amazing profusion of wild-flowers which this apparently ungenial soil produces. Of a certainty, if Colorado is not the paradise of wild-flowers, it is incomparably richer in them than any State east of the Mississippi River and north of "Mason and Dixon's Line." To begin with, there is a marvelous variety. Since I have taken note of them, from about the 10th of June till nearly the same date in July, I have found in my daily walk of not more than a mile or two, each time from one to seven new kinds. A few days I have found seven, many times I have brought home four, and never has a day pa.s.sed without at least one I had not seen before. That will average, at a low estimate, about a hundred varieties of flowers in a month, and all within a radius of four miles. What neighborhood can produce a record equal to this?

Then, again, the blossoms themselves are so abundant. Hardly a root contents itself with a single flower. The moccasin-plant is the only one I have noticed as yet. One root will usually send up from one to a dozen stems, fairly loaded with buds--like the yucca--which open a few every day, and thus keep in bloom for weeks. Or if there is but one stem, it will be packed with buds from the ground to the tip, with new ones to come out for every blossom that falls.

One in the vase on my stand at this moment is of this sort. It is a stem that sometimes attains a height of four or five feet. I think it lengthens as long as it is blossoming, and, to look at its preparations, that must be all summer. Every two or three inches of the stout stem is a whorl of leaves and buds and blossoms. Except the number of buds, it is all in fours. Opposite each other, making a cross, are four leaves, like a carnation leaf at first, but broadening and lengthening till it is two inches at the base and eight or ten long. Rising out of the axil of each leaf are buds, of graduated size and development up to the open blossom. That one stem, therefore, is prepared to open fresh flowers every day for a long time.

The plant is exquisitely beautiful, for the whole thing, from the stem to the flower petals, is of a delicate, light pea-green. The blossom opens like a star, with four stamens and four petals. The description sounds mathematical, but the plant is graceful--a veritable symphony in green.

A truly royal bouquet stands on my table--three spikes of yucca flowers in a tall vase, the middle one three feet high, bearing fifty blossoms and buds, of large size and a pink color; on its right, one a little less in size, with long creamy cups fully open; and on the left another, set with round greenish b.a.l.l.s, not so open as cups. They are distinctly different, but each seems more exquisite than the other, and their fragrance fills the room. In fact it is so overpowering that when at night I close the door opening into the grove, I shut the vase and its contents outside.

This grand flower is the glory of the mesa or table-land at the foot of this range of the Rocky Mountains--the Cheyenne Range. Where no gra.s.s--that we name gra.s.s--will grow, where trees die for want of water, these n.o.ble spikes of flowers dot the bare plains in profusion.

It is the rich possessor of three names. To the flower-lover it is the yucca; to the cultivator, or whosoever meddles with its leaves, it is the Spanish-bayonet; to the utilitarian, who values a thing only as it is of use to him, it is the soap-weed--ign.o.ble name, referring to certain qualities pertaining to its roots. When we remember that this flower is not the careful product of the garden, but of spontaneous growth in the most barren and hopeless-looking plains, we may well regard it as a type of Colorado's luxuriance in these loveliest of nature's gifts.

Of a surly disposition is the blossom of a cactus--the "p.r.i.c.kly-pear,"

as we call it in Eastern gardens, where we cultivate it for its oddity, I suppose. When the sojourner in this land of flowers sees, opening on all sides of this inhospitable-looking plant, rich cream-colored cups, the size of a Jacqueminot bud, and of a rare, satiny sheen, she cannot resist the desire to fill a low dish with them for her table.