The Way of the Wild (Hawkes)/Bird Songs and Call Notes and What They Mean
Did you ever stop to think what a cheerless old world this would be if there were no bird songs, and how much these simple songs do to cheer us and make us glad? Especially is this true of the country. I do not think the country would really be country at all without them.
How could Mother Nature ever call up the wild flowers, had not Bluebird announced springtime from the top of the elm tree several weeks before spring showed the faintest signs of coming? How could the first touch of green appear upon the lawn, and the first dandelion lift its golden head, had not the robin announced such events, and the meadow-lark been singing, "Spring o' the year, Spring o' the year" for days down in the meadow? How could the cowslips lift their bright yellow blossoms along the brookside had not the red winged blackbird made the meadow glad with his cheerful call, so full of the very ecstasy of spring?
I am sure that the buds could not unfold, or the blossoms appear in the fruit trees, did they not know that the birds were building in their branches, and that they needed the leafy fastnesses to hide their nests.
I lie awake several mornings in late March in order that I may not miss the robin's first morning song. He is the chorister for the birds' matin song. No one dares to sing until he gives the cry.
His call to awake, arise and sing always comes suddenly, or it sounds sudden. "Quit, quit, quit, wake up and be glad," he cries. From a distant tree, another robin responds with the morning matin song and the chorister himself joins in the glad refrain. "Cheery cheerup, cheery cheerup." It is certainly a good way to begin the day, with cheery cheerup. If you keep this song in your heart all day long, things will not go badly with you, or if they do for a while, you will cheer up and overcome them.
To my mind, the bird songs are the most true and tender expressions of gratitude to God that this old earth ever hears. They make man's petitions seem stale and incomplete. To hear the robins singing in the rain, their coats drabbled with wet and their toes perhaps numb with cold, is both an inspiration and a rebuke. If the robins sing when it rains, why not we?
There are many birds that are so glad that they sing on the wing.
To them winging is singing, and singing means winging. Conspicuous in this last are: The bobolink, the meadow-lark, the oriole, the wild canary, the vesper sparrow, the oven bird, and several others whose songs are not so beautiful. To me, the wild canary when he flies always seems to be saying, "O see us go; O see us go; O see us go," over and over.
The song of the woodcock on the wing is wonderful and many naturalists have never heard it. Even Mr. Burroughs was nearly sixty when he first heard the woodcock sing on the wing.
The woodcock is one of the first arrivals in the springtime. You will hear his hoarse glad cry along the brookside, a note which is identical with the hoarse cry made by the nighthawk as he sails through the summer skies a few weeks later. If you have good eyes and you know what this cry prefaces, presently you will see Mr. Woodcock go sailing up into the spring sky. He zigzags up, as he is not a strong flyer.
When he is well up, he will fly about for a while, in perfect silence, then he will come zigzagging down, pivoting and wheeling, and pouring out his liquid song, which sounds like about a dozen canaries all singing at once.
There are many songs so simple and so characteristic that any one can tell them. Such songs as that of the cuckoo, which, when he is very busy eating tent-caterpillars, is shortened to simply the second syllable coo. The wild weird cry of the whippoorwill cannot be mistaken.
Nor can the song of the ring-dove, or that of the mourning dove; the latter is so slight in sound that it would not be heard at all were it not so perfectly given. This song is often heard before a storm. There are other good weather prophets who warn us of coming storms. The robin sings a sad, sweet song before the rain. The cuckoo, the bob-white and others give us warning of approaching storms, as do certain owls.
The notes of alarm which the birds use are quite different from their songs. They are always given with a rising inflection and there is a harassed, pathetic quality to those notes. One day I stepped to my front door with a couple of small sparrow-hawks balanced on my finger. They were too small to fly and perfectly harmless, but what happened?
In less than a minute's time, there were at least fifty birds of probably a dozen different species, crying and quitting at the top of their voices, protesting in no uncertain language that I, the friend of birds, had dared bring these robbers and murderers to my front door. The birds made such a fuss that I was obliged to carry the young hawks into the house.
It is very pleasant on an autumn night when hundreds of sparrows and other birds have gone to roost in the vines that run the entire length of my house, to hear the birds cheeping and twittering to one another softly before they tuck their heads under their wings and go to sleep. Perhaps they are saying good-night, and wishing each other pleasant dreams.
The same soft notes come from the fledglings each night as the twilight settles and they prepare to sleep.
When I am not too busy, I always go to the piazza to hear the vesper song of the birds. It is a most tender and beautiful way in which to close the day, a sort of benediction that lingers long in my heart.
First the robin will begin his evening song. Another will answer from a distant tree-top, for all the world like an echo. If I happen to be at the little cottage where I sometimes go in the springtime, then the veery will trill from a near-by thicket his remarkable descending spiral song, wild and weird, like the very spirit of the woods, yet wonderfully tender. Then the wood-thrush, which Mr. Burroughs considers the finest of all our song-birds, will fill in the silence with his flute-like song, liquid as molten silver falling into a crucible of gold. Soon the whippoorwills will call from a distance, the minor note of the woods. Perhaps the hermit thrush will close the concert with a song so tender and beautiful that I am left breathless and entranced.
As the vesper songs of the birds grow fainter and fainter, the cricket takes up the refrain from the grass near by. "Cheep cheep cheep. I am glad too. I am not much of a singer, but hear me. Cheep cheep."
Then the spring fragrance fills the air, the twilight deepens, the stars appear, and I go into the house. I have been hearing the birds praise God for His goodness and say all their other prayers as well. Instinctively my own heart swells with gratitude, because of the birds' vesper song, and their devotion to the ways of nature and the haunts of man.