My Garden Acquaintance | Page 8

annoyances, have succeeded in
driving off the blue-jays who used to build in our pines, their gay colors
and quaint, noisy ways making them welcome and amusing neighbors.
I once had the chance of doing a kindness to a household of them,
which they received with very friendly condescension. I had had my
eye for some time upon a nest, and was puzzled by a constant fluttering
of what seemed full-grown wings in it whenever I drew nigh. At last I

climbed the tree, in spite of angry protests from the old birds against
my intrusion. The mystery had a very simple solution. In building the
nest, a long piece of packthread had been somewhat loosely woven in.
Three of the young had contrived to entangle themselves in it, and had
become full-grown without being able to launch themselves upon the
air. One was unharmed; another had so tightly twisted the cord about
its shank that one foot was curled up and seemed paralyzed; the third,
in its struggles to escape, had sawn through the flesh of the thigh and so
much harmed itself that I thought it humane to put an end to its misery.
When I took out my knife to cut their hempen bonds, the heads of the
family seemed to divine my friendly intent. Suddenly ceasing their
cries and threats. they perched quietly within reach of my hand, and
watched me in my work of manumission. This, owing to the fluttering
terror of the prisoners, was an affair of some delicacy; but ere long I
was rewarded by seeing one of them fly away to a neighboring tree,
while the cripple, making a parachute of his wings, came lightly to the
ground, and hopped off as well as he could with one leg, obsequiously
waited on by his elders. A week later I had the satisfaction of meeting
him in the pine-walk, in good spirits, and already so far recovered as to
be able to balance himself with the lame foot. I have no doubt that in
his old age he accounted for his lameness by some handsome story of a
wound received at the famous Battle of the Pines, when our tribe,
overcome by numbers, was driven from its ancient camping- ground.
Of late years the jays have visited us only at intervals; and in winter
their bright plumage, set off by the snow, and their cheerful cry, are
especially welcome. They would have furnished Aesop with a fable, for
the feathered crest in which they seem to take so much satisfaction is
often their fatal snare. Country boys make a hole with their finger in the
snow-crust just large enough to admit the jay's head, and, hollowing it
out somewhat beneath, bait it with a few kernels of corn. The crest slips
easily into the trap, but refuses to be pulled out again, and he who came
to feast remains a prey.
Twice have the crow-blackbirds attempted a settlement in my pines,
and twice have the robins, who claim a right of preemption, so
successfully played the part of border-ruffians as to drive them
away,--to my great regret, for they are the best substitute we have for

rooks. At Shady Hill(1) (now, alas! empty of its so long-loved
household) they build by hundreds, and nothing can be more cheery
than their creaking clatter (like a convention of old-fashioned
tavern-signs) as they gather at evening to debate in mass meeting their
windy politics, or to gossip at their tent-doors over the events of the day.
Their port is grave, and their stalk across the turf as martial as that of a
second-rate ghost in Hamlet. They never meddled with my corn, so far
as I could discover.
(1) The home of the Nortons, in Cambridge, who were at the time of
this paper in Europe.
For a few years I had crows, but their nests are an irresistible bait for
boys, and their settlement was broken up. They grew so wonted as to
throw off a great part of their shyness, and to tolerate my near approach.
One very hot day I stood for some time within twenty feet of a mother
and three children, who sat on an elm bough over my head gasping in
the sultry air, and holding their wings half-spread for coolness. All
birds during the pairing season become more or less sentimental, and
murmur soft nothings in a tone very unlike the grinding-organ
repetition and loudness of their habitual song. The crow is very comical
as a lover, and to hear him trying to soften his croak to the proper Saint
Preux(1) standard has something the effect of a Mississippi boatman
quoting Tennyson. Yet there are few things to my ear more melodious
than his caw of a clear winter morning as