The Log of the Sun Part 9

I had no fear of _Aurelia_, but when another free-swimming species of jelly-fish, _Cyanea_, or the blue-jelly, appeared, I swam ash.o.r.e with all speed. This great jelly is usually more of a reddish liver-colour than a purple, and is much to be dreaded. Its tentacles are of enormous length. I have seen specimens which measured two feet across the disc, with streamers fully forty feet long, and one has been recorded seven feet across and no less than one hundred and twelve feet to the tip of the cruel tentacles! These trail behind in eight bunches and form a living, tangled labyrinth as deadly as the hair of the fabled Medusa--whose name indeed has been so appropriately applied to this division of animals. The touch of each tentacle to the skin is like a lash of nettle, and there would be little hope for a diver whose path crossed such a fiery tangle.

The untold myriads of little darts which are shot out secrete a poison which is terribly irritating.

On the crevice bottoms a sight now and then meets my eyes which brings the "devil-fish" of Victor Hugo's romance vividly to mind,--a misshapen squid making its way snakily over the sh.e.l.ls and seaweed. Its large eyes gaze fixedly around and the arms reach alternately forward, the sucking cups lined with their cruel teeth closing over the inequalities of the bottom.

The creature may suddenly change its mode of progression and shoot like an arrow, backward and upward. If we watch one in its pa.s.sage over areas of seaweed and sand, a wonderful adaptation becomes apparent. Its colour changes continually; when near sand it is of a sombre brown hue, then blushes of colour pa.s.s over it and the tint changes, corresponding to the seaweed or patches of pink sponge over which it swims. The way in which this is accomplished is very ingenious and loses nothing by examination.

Beneath the skin are numerous cells filled with liquid pigment. When at rest these contract until they are almost invisible, appearing as very small specks or dots on the surface of the body. When the animal wishes to change its hue, certain muscles which radiate from these colour cells are shortened, drawing the cells out in all directions until they seem confluent. It is as if the freckles on a person's face should be all joined together, when an ordinary tan would result.

From bottoms ten to twenty fathoms below the surface, deeper than mortal eye can probably ever hope to reach, the dredge brings up all manner of curious things; basket starfish, with arms divided and subdivided into many tendrils, on the tips of which it walks, the remaining part converging upward like the trellis of a vine-covered summer house. Sponges of many hues must fairly carpet large areas of the deep water, as the dredge is often loaded with them. The small sh.o.r.e-loving ones which I photographed are in perfect health, but the camera cannot show the many tiny currents of water pouring in food and oxygen at the smaller openings, and returning in larger streams from the tall funnels on the surface of the sponge, which a pinch of carmine dust reveals so beautifully. From the deeper aquatic gardens come up great orange and yellow sponges, two and three feet in length, and around the bases of these the weird serpent stars are clinging, while crabs scurry away as the ma.s.s reaches the surface of the water.

Treasures from depths of forty and even fifty fathoms can be obtained when a trip is taken with the trawl-men. One can sit fascinated for hours, watching the hundreds of yards of line reel in, with some interesting creature on each of the thirty-seven hundred odd hooks. At times a glance down into the clear water will show a score of fish in sight at once, hake, haddock, cod, halibut, dog-fish, and perhaps an immense "barndoor"

skate, a yard or more square. This latter hold back with frantic flaps of its great "wings," and tax all the strength of the st.u.r.dy Acadian fishermen to pull it to the gunwale.

Now and then a huge "meat-rock," the fishermen's apt name for an anemone, comes up, impaled on a hook, and still clinging to a stone of five to ten pounds weight. These gigantic scarlet ones from full fifty fathoms far surpa.s.s any near sh.o.r.e. Occasionally the head alone of a large fish will appear, with the entire body bitten clean off, a hint of the monsters which must haunt the lower depths. The pressure of the air must be excessive, for many of the fishes have their swimming bladders fairly forced out of their mouths by the lessening of atmospheric pressure as they are drawn to the surface. When a basket starfish finds one of the baits in that sunless void far beneath our boat, he hugs it so tenaciously that the upward jerks of the reel only make him hold the more tightly.

Once in a great while the fishermen find what they call a "k.n.o.b-fish" on one of their hooks, and I never knew what they meant until one day a small colony of five was brought ash.o.r.e. _Boltenia_, the scientists call them, tall, queer-shaped things; a stalk six to eight inches in length, with a k.n.o.b or oblong bulb-like body at the summit, looking exactly like the flower of a lady-slipper orchid and as delicately coloured. This is a member of that curious family of Ascidians, which forever trembles in the balance between the higher backboned animals and the lower division, where are cla.s.sified the humbler insects, crabs, and snails. The young of _Boltenia_ promises everything in its tiny backbone or notochord, but it all ends in promise, for that shadow of a great ambition withers away, and the creature is doomed to a lowly and vegetative life. If we soften the hard scientific facts which tell us of these dumb, blind creatures, with the humane mellowing thought of the oneness of all life, we will find much that is pathetic and affecting in their humble biographies from our point of view. And yet these cases of degeneration are far from anything like actual misfortunes, or mishaps of nature, as Buffon was so fond of thinking. These creatures have found their adult mode of life more free from compet.i.tion than any other, and hence their adoption of it. It is only another instance of exquisite adaptation to an unfilled niche in the life of the world.

Yet another phase of enjoying the life of these northern waters; the one which comes after all the work and play of collecting is over for the day, after the last specimen is given a fresh supply of water for the night, and the final note in our journal is written. Then, as dusk falls, we make our way to the beach, s.h.i.+p our rudder and oars and push slowly along sh.o.r.e, or drift quietly with the tide. The stars may come out in clear splendour and the visual symphony of the northern lights play over the dark vault above us, or all may be obscured in lowering, leaden clouds.

But the lights of the sea are never obscured--they always s.h.i.+ne with a splendour which keeps one entranced for hours.

At night the ripples and foam of the Fundy sh.o.r.es seem transformed to molten silver and gold, and after each receding wave the emerald seaweed is left dripping with millions of sparkling lights, s.h.i.+ning with a living l.u.s.tre which would pale the brightest gem. Each of these countless sparks is a tiny animal, as perfect in its substance and as well adapted to its cycle of life as the highest created being. The wonderful way in which this phosph.o.r.escence permeates everything--the jelly-fish seeming elfish fireworks as they throb through the water with rhythmic beats--the fish brilliantly lighted up and plainly visible as they dart about far beneath the surface--makes such a night on the Bay of Fundy an experience to be always remembered.

Like the tints on a crescent sea beach When the moon is new and thin, Into our hearts high yearnings Come welling and surging in-- Come, from the mystic ocean, Whose rim no foot has trod-- Some of us call it longing, And others call it G.o.d.

W. H. Carruth.

JULY

BIRDS IN A CITY

We frequently hear people say that if only they lived in the country they would take up the study of birds with great interest, but that a city life prevented any nature study. To show how untrue this is, I once made a census of wild birds which were nesting in the New York Zoological Park, which is situated within the limits of New York City. Part of the Park is wooded, while much s.p.a.ce is given up to the collections of birds and animals. Throughout the year thousands of people crowd the walks and penetrate to every portion of the grounds; yet in spite of this lack of seclusion no fewer than sixty-one species build their nests here and successfully rear their young. The list was made without shooting a single bird and in each instance the identification was absolute. This shows what a little protection will accomplish, while many places of equal area in the country which are harried by boys and cats are tenanted by a bare dozen species.

Let us see what a walk in late June, or especially in July, will show of these bold invaders of our very city. Wild wood ducks frequently decoy to the flocks of pinioned birds and sometimes mate with some of them. One year a wild bird chose as its mate a little brown female, a pinioned bird, and refused to desert her even when the brood of summer ducklings was being caught and pinioned. Such devotion is rare indeed.

In the top of one of the most inaccessible trees in the Park a great rough nest of sticks shows where a pair of black-crowned night herons have made their home for years, and from the pale green eggs hatch the most awkward of nestling herons, which squawk and grow to their prime, on a diet of small fish. When they are able to fly they pay frequent visits to their relations in the great flying cage, perching on the top and gazing with longing eyes at the abundant feasts of fish which are daily brought by the keepers to their charges. This duck and heron are the only ones of their orders thus to honour the Park by nesting, although a number of other species are not uncommon during the season of migration.

Of the waders which in the spring and fall teeter along the bank of the Bronx River, only a pair or two of spotted sandpipers remain throughout the nesting period, content to lay their eggs in some retired spot in the corner of a field, where there is the least danger to them and to the fluffy b.a.l.l.s of long-legged down which later appear and scurry about. The great horned owl and the red-tailed hawk formerly nested in the park, but the frequent noise of blasting and the building operations have driven them to more isolated places, and of their relatives there remain only the little screech owls and the sparrow hawks. The latter feed chiefly upon English sparrows and hence are worthy of the most careful protection.

These birds should be encouraged to build near our homes, and if not killed or driven away sometimes choose the eaves of our houses as their domiciles and thus, by invading the very haunts of the sparrows, they would speedily lessen their numbers. A brood of five young hawks was recently taken from a nest under the eaves of a school-house in this city.

I immediately took this as a text addressed to the pupils, and the princ.i.p.al was surprised to learn that these birds were so valuable. In the Park the sparrow hawks nest in a hollow tree, as do the screech owls.

Other most valuable birds which nest in the Park are the black-billed and yellow-billed cuckoos, whose depredations among the hairy and spiny caterpillars should arouse our grat.i.tude. For these insects are refused by almost all other birds, and were it not for these slim, graceful creatures they would increase to prodigious numbers. Their two or three light blue eggs are always laid on the frailest of frail platforms made of a few sticks. The belted kingfisher bores into the bank of the river and rears his family of six or eight in the dark, ill-odoured chamber at the end.

Young cuckoos and kingfishers are the quaintest of young birds. Their plumage does not come out a little at a time, as in other nestlings, but the sheaths which surround the growing feathers remain until they are an inch or more in length; then one day, in the s.p.a.ce of only an hour or so, the overlapping armour of bluish tiles bursts and the plumage a.s.sumes a normal appearance.

The little black-and-white downy and the flicker are the two woodp.e.c.k.e.rs which make the Park their home. Both nest in hollows bored out by their strong beaks, but although full of splinters and sawdust, such a habitation is far superior to the sooty chimneys in which the young chimney swifts break from their snow-white eggs and twitter for food. How impatiently they must look up at the blue sky, and one would think that they must long for the time when they can spread their sickle-shaped wings and dash about from dawn to dark! Is it not wonderful that one of them should live to grow up when we think of the fragile little cup which is their home?--a mosaic of delicate twigs held together only by the sticky saliva of the parent birds.

A relation of theirs--though we should never guess it--is sitting upon her tiny air castle high up in an apple tree not far away,--a ruby-throated hummingbird. If we take a peep into the nest when the young hummingbirds are only partly grown, we shall see that their bills are broad and stubby, like those of the swifts. Their home, however, is indeed a different affair,--a pinch of plant-down tied together with cobwebs and stuccoed with lichens, like those which are growing all about upon the tree. If we do not watch the female when she settles to her young or eggs we may search in vain for this tiniest of homes, so closely does it resemble an ordinary knot on a branch.

The flycatchers are well represented in the Park, there being no fewer than five species; the least flycatcher, wood pewee, phoebe, crested flycatcher, and kingbird. The first two prefer the woods, the phoebe generally selects a mossy rock or a bridge beam, the fourth nests in a hollow tree and often decorates its home with a snake-skin. The kingbird builds an untidy nest in an apple tree. Our American crow is, of course, a member of this little community of birds, and that in spite of persecution, for in the spring one or two are apt to contract a taste for young ducklings and hence have to be put out of the way. The fish crow, a smaller cousin of the big black fellow, also nests here, easily known by his shriller, higher caw. A single pair of blue jays nest in the Park, but the English starling occupies every box which is put up and bids fair to be as great or a greater nuisance than the sparrow. It is a handsome bird and a fine whistler, but when we remember how this foreigner is slowly but surely elbowing our native birds out of their rightful haunts, we find ourselves losing sight of its beauties. The cowbird, of course, imposes her eggs upon many of the smaller species of birds, while our beautiful purple grackle, meadow lark, red-winged blackbird, and the Baltimore and orchard orioles rear their young in safety. The cardinal, scarlet tanager, indigo bunting, and rose-breasted grosbeak form a quartet of which even a tropical land might well be proud, and the two latter species have, in addition to brilliant plumage, very pleasing songs. Such wealth of aesthetic characteristics are unusual in any one species, the wide-spread law of compensation decreeing otherwise. More sombre hued seed-eaters which live their lives in the Park are towhees, swamp, song, field, and chipping sparrows. The bank and barn swallows skim over field and pond all through the summer, gleaning their insect harvest from the air, and building their nests in the places from which they have taken their names.

The rare rough-winged swallow deigns to linger and nest in the Park as well as do his more common brethren.

The dainty pensile nests which become visible when the leaves fall in the autumn are swung by four species of vireos, the white-eyed, red-eyed, warbling, and yellow-throated. Of the interesting and typically North American family of wood warblers I have numbered no fewer than eight which nest in the Park; these are the redstart, the yellow-breasted chat, northern yellow-throat, oven-bird, the yellow warbler, blue-winged, black-and-white creeping warblers, and one other to be mentioned later.

Injurious insects find their doom when the young house and Carolina wrens are on the wing. Catbirds and robins are among the most abundant breeders, while chickadees and white-breasted nuthatches are less often seen. The bluebird haunts the hollow apple trees, and of the thrushes proper the veery or Wilson's and the splendid wood thrush sing to their mates on the nests among the saplings.

The rarest of all the birds which I have found nesting in the Park is a little yellow and green warbler, with a black throat and sides of the face, known as the Lawrence warbler. Only a few of his kind have ever been seen, and strange to say his mate was none other than a demure blue-winged warbler. His nest was on the ground and from it six young birds flew to safety and not to museum drawers.

NIGHT MUSIC OF THE SWAMP

To many, a swamp or marsh brings only the very practical thought of whether it can be readily drained. Let us rejoice, however, that many marshes cannot be thus easily wiped out of existence, and hence they remain as isolated bits of primeval wilderness, hedged about by farms and furrows. The water is the life-blood of the marsh,--drain it, and reed and rush, bird and batrachian, perish or disappear. The marsh, to him who enters it in a receptive mood, holds, besides mosquitoes and stagnation,--melody, the mystery of unknown waters, and the sweetness of Nature undisturbed by man.

The ideal marsh is as far as one can go from civilisation. The depths of a wood holds its undiscovered secrets; the mysterious call of the veery lends a wildness that even to-day has not ceased to pervade the old wood.

There are spots overgrown with fern and carpeted with velvety wet moss; here also the skunk cabbage and cowslip grow rank among the alders. Surely man cannot live near this place--but the tinkle of a cowbell comes faintly on the gentle stirring breeze--and our illusion is dispelled, the charm is broken.

But even to-day, when we push the punt through the reeds from the clear river into the narrow, tortuous channel of the marsh, we have left civilisation behind us. The great ranks of the cat-tails shut out all view of the outside world; the distant sounds of civilisation serve only to accentuate the isolation. It is the land of the Indian, as it was before the strange white man, brought from afar in great white-sailed s.h.i.+ps, came to usurp the land of the wondering natives. At any moment we fancy that we may see an Indian canoe silently round a bend in the channel.

The marsh has remained unchanged since the days when the Mohican Indians speared fish there. We are living in a bygone time. A little green heron flies across the water. How wild he is; nothing has tamed him. He also is the same now as always. He does not nest in orchard or meadow, but holds himself aloof, making no concessions to man and the ever increasing spread of his civilisation. He does not come to his doors for food. He can find food for himself and in abundance; he asks only to be let alone. Nor does he intrude himself. Occasionally we meet him along our little meadow stream, but he makes no advances. As we come suddenly upon him, how indignant he seems at being disturbed in his hunting. Like the Indian, he is jealous of his ancient domain and resents intrusion. He retires, however, throwing back to us a cry of disdain. Here in the marsh is the last stand of primitive nature in the settled country; here is the last stronghold of the untamed. The bulrushes rise in ranks, like the spears of a great army, surrounding and guarding the colony of the marsh.

There seems to be a kins.h.i.+p between the voices of the marsh dwellers. Most of them seem to have a muddy, aquatic note. The boom of the frog sounds like some great stone dropped into the water; the little marsh wren's song is the "babble and tinkle of water running out of a silver flask."

The blackbird seems to be the one connecting link between the highlands and the lowlands. Seldom does one see other citizens of the marsh in the upland. How glorious is the flight of a great blue heron from one feeding-ground to another! He does not tarry over the foreign territory, nor does he hurry. With neck and head furled close and legs straight out behind, he pursues his course, swerving neither to the right nor the left.

"Vainly the fowler's eye Might mark thy distant flight to do thee wrong, As darkly painted on the crimson sky Thy figure floats along."

The blackbirds, however, are more neighbourly. They even forage in the foreign territory, returning at night to sleep.

In nesting time the red-wing is indeed a citizen of the lowland. His voice is as distinctive of the marsh as is the croak of the frog, and from a distance it is one of the first sounds to greet the ear. How beautiful is his clear whistle with its liquid break! Indeed one may say that he is the most conspicuous singer of the marshlands. His is not a sustained song, but the exuberant expression of a happy heart.

According to many writers the little marsh wren is without song. No song!

As well say that the farmer boy's whistling as he follows the plough, or the sailor's song as he hoists the sail, is not music! All are the songs of the lowly, the melody of those glad to be alive and out in the free air.

When man goes into the marsh, the marsh retires within itself, as a turtle retreats within his sh.e.l.l. With the exception of a few blackbirds and marsh wrens, babbling away the nest secret, and an occasional frog's croak, all the inhabitants have stealthily retired. The spotted turtle has slid from the decayed log as the boat pushed through the reeds. At our approach the heron has flown and the little Virginia rail has scuttled away among the reeds.

Remain perfectly quiet, however, and give the marsh time to regain its composure. One by one the tenants of the swamp will take up the trend of their business where it was interrupted.

All about, the frogs rest on the green carpet of the lily pads, basking in the sun. The little rail again runs among the reeds, searching for food in the form of small snails. The blackbirds and wrens, most domestic in character, go busily about their home business; the turtles again come up to their positions, and a muskrat swims across the channel. One hopes that the little colony of marsh wren homes on stilts above the water, like the ancient lake dwellers of Tenocht.i.tlan, may have no enemies. But the habit of building dummy nests is suggestive that the wee birds are pitting their wits against the cunning of some enemy,--and suspicion rests upon the serpent.

As evening approaches and the shadows from the bordering wood point long fingers across the marsh, the blackbirds straggle back from their feeding-grounds and settle, clattering, among the reeds. Their clamour dies gradually away and night settles down upon the marsh.