Wake-Robin | Page 9

by first one,
then another, as they sat about upon the naked limbs,--anon, a sort of
wild, rollicking laughter, intermingled with various cries, yelps, and
squeals, as if some incident had excited their mirth and ridicule.
Whether this social hilarity and boisterousness is in celebration of the
pairing or mating ceremony, or whether it is only a sort of annual
"house-warming" common among high-holes on resuming their
summer quarters, is a question upon which I reserve my judgment.
Unlike most of his kinsmen, the golden-wing prefers the fields and the
borders of the forest to the deeper seclusion of the woods, and hence,
contrary to the habit of his tribe, obtains most of his subsistence from
the ground, probing it for ants and crickets. He is not quite satisfied
with being a woodpecker. He courts the society of the robin and the
finches, abandons the trees for the meadow, and feeds eagerly upon
berries and grain. What may be the final upshot of this course of living
is a question worth the attention of Darwin. Will his taking to the
ground and his pedestrian feats result in lengthening his legs, his
feeding upon berries and grains subdue his tints and soften his voice,
and his associating with Robin put a song into his heart?

Indeed, what would be more interesting than the history of our birds for
the last two or three centuries. There can be no doubt that the presence
of man has exerted a very marked and friendly influence upon them,
since they so multiply in his society. The birds of California, it is said,
were mostly silent till after its settlement, and I doubt if the Indians
heard the wood thrush as we hear him. Where did the bobolink disport
himself before there were meadows in the North and rice fields in the
South? Was he the same lithe, merry-hearted beau then as now? And
the sparrow, the lark, and the goldfinch, birds that seem so indigenous
to the open fields and so adverse to the woods,--we cannot conceive of
their existence in a vast wilderness and without man.
But to return. The song sparrow, that universal favorite and firstling of
the spring, comes before April, and its simple strain gladdens all hearts.
May is the month of the swallows and the orioles. There are many other
distinguished arrivals, indeed nine tenths of the birds are here by the
last week in May, yet the swallows and the orioles are the most
conspicuous. The bright plumage of the latter seems really like an
arrival from the tropics. I see them dash through the blossoming trees,
and all the forenoon hear their incessant warbling and wooing. The
swallows dive and chatter about the barn, or squeak and build beneath
the eaves; the partridge drums in the fresh sprouting woods; the long,
tender note of the meadowlark comes up from the meadow; and at
sunset, from every marsh and pond come the ten thousand voices of the
hylas. May is the transition month, and exists to connect April and June,
the root with the flower.
With June the cup is full, our hearts are satisfied, there is no more to be
desired. The perfection of the season, among other things, has brought
the perfection of the song and the plumage of the birds. The master
artists are all here; and the expectations excited by the robin and the
song sparrow are fully justified. The thrushes have all come; and I sit
down upon the first rock, with hands full of the pink azalea, to listen.
With me the cuckoo does not arrive till June; and often the goldfinch,
the kingbird, the scarlet tanager delay their coming till then. In the
meadows the bobolink is in all his glory; in the high pastures the field

sparrow sings his breezy vesper-hymn; and the woods are unfolding to
the music of the thrushes.
The cuckoo is one of the most solitary birds of our forests, and is
strangely tame and quiet, appearing equally untouched by joy or grief,
fear or anger. Something remote seems ever weighing upon his mind.
His note or call is as of one lost or wandering, and to the farmer is
prophetic of rain. Amid the general joy and the sweet assurance of
things, I love to listen to the strange clairvoyant call. Heard a quarter of
a mile away, from out the depths of the forest, there is something
peculiarly weird and monkish about it. Wordsworth's lines upon the
European species apply equally well to ours:--"O blithe new-comer! I
have heard, I hear thee and rejoice: O cuckoo! shall I call thee bird? Or
but a wandering voice?
"While I am lying on the grass, Thy loud note smites my ear! From hill
to hill it seems to pass,