Wake-Robin | Page 6

I can do nothing without them, but I must give them my own flavor. I
must impart to them a quality which heightens and intensifies them.
To interpret Nature is not to improve upon her: it is to draw her out; it
is to have an emotional intercourse with her, absorb her, and reproduce
her tinged with the colors of the spirit.
If I name every bird I see in my walk, describe its color and ways, etc.,
give a lot of facts or details about the bird, it is doubtful if my reader is
interested. But if I relate the bird in some way to human life, to my own
life,--show what it is to me and what it is in the landscape and the
season,--then do I give my reader a live bird and not a labeled
specimen.
J. B. 1895.

WAKE-ROBIN
I
THE RETURN OF THE BIRDS

Spring in our northern climate may fairly be said to extend from the
middle of March to the middle of June. At least, the vernal tide
continues to rise until the latter date, and it is not till after the summer
solstice that the shoots and twigs begin to harden and turn to wood, or
the grass to lose any of its freshness and succulency.
It is this period that marks the return of the birds,--one or two of the
more hardy or half-domesticated species, like the song sparrow and the
bluebird, usually arriving in March, while the rarer and more brilliant
wood-birds bring up the procession in June. But each stage of the
advancing season gives prominence to the certain species, as to certain
flowers. The dandelion tells me when to look for the swallow, the
dogtooth violet when to expect the wood-thrush, and when I have
found the wake-robin in bloom I know the season is fairly inaugurated.
With me this flower is associated, not merely with the awakening of
Robin, for he has been awake for some weeks, but with the universal
awakening and rehabilitation of nature.
Yet the coming and going of the birds is more or less a mystery and a
surprise. We go out in the morning, and no thrush or vireo is to be
heard; we go out again, and every tree and grove is musical; yet again,
and all is silent. Who saw them come? Who saw them depart?
This pert little winter wren, for instance, darting in and out the fence,
diving under the rubbish here and coming up yards away,--how does he
manage with those little circular wings to compass degrees and zones,
and arrive always in the nick of time? Last August I saw him in the
remotest wilds of the Adirondacks, impatient and inquisitive as usual; a
few weeks later, on the Potomac, I was greeted by the same hardy little
busybody. Does he travel by easy stages from bush to bush and from
wood to wood? or has that compact little body force and courage to
brave the night and the upper air, and so achieve leagues at one pull?
And yonder bluebird with the earth tinge on his breast and the sky tinge
on his back,--did he come down out of the heaven on that bright March
morning when he told us so softly and plaintively that, if we pleased,
spring had come? Indeed, there is nothing in the return of the birds
more curious and suggestive than in the first appearance, or rumors of

the appearance, of this little blue-coat. The bird at first seems a mere
wandering voice in the air: one hears its call or carol on some bright
March morning, but is uncertain of its source or direction; it falls like a
drop of rain when no cloud is visible; one looks and listens, but to no
purpose. The weather changes, perhaps a cold snap with snow comes
on, and it may be a week before I hear the not again, and this time or
the next perchance see this bird sitting on a stake in the fence lifting his
wing as he calls cheerily to his mate. Its notes now become daily more
frequent; the birds multiply, and, flitting from point to point, call and
warble more confidently and gleefully. Their boldness increases till one
sees them hovering with a saucy, inquiring air about barns and
out-buildings, peeping into dove-cotes and stable windows, inspecting
knotholes and pump-trees, intent only on a place to nest. They wage
war against robins and wrens, pick quarrels with swallows, and seem to
deliberate for days over the policy of taking forcible possession of one
of the mud-houses of the latter. But as the season advances they drift
more into the background. Schemes of conquest which they at first
seemed bent upon are abandoned, and the settle