Wild Folk/High Sky

by Samuel Scoville, Jr.

 

IV
HIGH SKY

"Clang! Clang! Clang!"—the sound drifted down from mid-sky, as if the ice-cold gates of winter were opening. A gaggle of Canada geese, wearing white bibs below their black heads and necks, came beating down the wind, shouting to earth as they flew. Below them, although it was still fall, the tan-colored marsh showed ash-gray stretches of new ice, with here and there blue patches of snow. Suddenly, faint and far sounded other notes, as of a distant horn, and a company of misty-white trumpeter swans swept along the sky, gleaming like silver in the sun. Down from the Arctic tundras they had come, where during the short summer their great nests had stood like watchtowers above the level sphagnum bogs; for the trumpeter swan, like the eagle, scorns to hide its nest and fears no foe of earth or air.

As their trumpet notes pealed across the marsh, they were answered everywhere by the confused cries and calls of innumerable waterfowl; for when the swan starts south, it is no time for lesser breeds to linger. Wisps of snipe and badlings of duck sprang into the air. The canvasback ducks, with their dark red heads and necks, grunted as they flew; the wings of the golden-eye whistled, the scaup purred, the black ducks, and the mallards with emerald-green heads, quacked, the pintails whimpered—the air was full of duck-notes. As they swept southward, the different families took their places according to their speed. Well up in the van were the canvas-backs, who can travel at the rate of one hundred and sixty feet per second. Next came the pintails, and the wood-ducks, whose drakes have wings of velvet-black, purple, and white. The mallards and the black ducks brought up the rear; while far behind a cloud of blue-winged teal whizzed down the sky, the lustrous light blue of their wings glinting like polished steel in the sunlight. Flying in perfect unison, the distance between them and the main flock rapidly lessened; for the blue-winged teal, when it settles down to fly, can tick off two miles a minute. A few yards back of their close cloud followed a single green-winged teal, a tiny drake with a chestnut-brown head brightly striped with green, who wore an emerald patch on either wing.

In a moment the blue-wings had passed the quacking mallards and black ducks as if they had been anchored in the sky. The whistlers and pintails were overtaken next, and then, more slowly, the little flock, flying in perfect form, began to cut down the lead of the canvasbacks in front. Little by little, the tiny teal edged up, in complete silence, to the whizzing, grunting leaders, until at last they were flying right abreast of them. At first slowly, and then more and more rapidly, they drew away, until a clear space of sky showed between the two flocks, including the green-winged follower. Then, for the first time, the blue-wings spoke, voicing their victory in soft, lisping notes, which were echoed by a mellow whistle from the green-wing.

The sound of his own voice seemed suddenly to remind the latter that he was one of the speed-kings of the sky. An inch shorter than his blue-winged brother, the green-winged teal is yet a hardier and a swifter bird. Unhampered by any flock-formation, the wing-beats of this lone flyer increased until he shot forward like a projectile. In a moment he was up to the leaders, then above them; and then, with a tremendous burst of speed, he passed and went slashing down the sky alone. Farther and farther in front flashed the little green-striped head, and more and more faintly his short whistles came back to the flock behind.

Perhaps it was his call, or it might have been the green gleam of his speeding head, that caught the attention of a sky-pirate hovering in a reach of sky far above. Like other pirates, this one wore a curling black moustache in the form of a black stripe around its beak which, with the long, rakish wings and hooked, toothed beak, marked it as the duck-hawk, one of the fiercest and swiftest of the falcons. As the hawk caught sight of the speeding little teal, his telescopic eyes gleamed like fire, and curving down through the sky, in a moment he was in its wake. Every feather of the little drake's taut and tense body showed his speed, as he traveled at a two-mile-a-minute clip.

Not so with the lithe falcon who pursued him. The movements of his long, narrow wings and arrowy body were so effortless that it seemed impossible that he could overtake the other. Yet every wing-beat brought him nearer and nearer, in a flight so swift and silent that not until the shadow of death fell upon the teal did the latter even know that he was being pursued. Then, indeed, he squawked in mortal terror, and tried desperately to increase a speed which already seemed impossible. Yet ever the shadow hung over him like a black shroud, and then, in a flash, the little green-wing's fate overtook him. Almost too quickly for eye to follow, the duck-hawk delivered the terrible slash with which falcons kill their prey, and in an instant the teal changed from a live, vibrant, arrow-swift bird to a limp mass of fluttering feathers, which dropped like a plummet through the air. With a rush, the duck-hawk swung down after his dead quarry, and catching it in his claws, swooped down to earth to feast full at his leisure.

Far, far above the lower reaches of the sky, where the cloud of waterfowl were flying, above rain and storm and snow, was a solitude entered by only a few of the sky-pilgrims. There, three miles high, were naked space and a curved sky that shone like a great blue sun. In the north a cluster of black dots showed against the blue. Swiftly they grew in size, until at last, under a sun far brighter than the one known to the earthbound, there flashed through the glittering air a flock of golden plover. They were still wearing their summer suits, with black breasts and sides, while every brown-black feather on back and crown was widely margined with pure gold. Before they reached Patagonia the black would be changed for gray; for the Arctic summer of the golden plover is so short that he must moult, and even do his courting, on the wing.

This company had nested up among the everlasting snows, and the mileage of their flight was to be measured by thousands instead of hundreds. To-day they were on their first lap of fifteen hundred miles to the shores of Nova Scotia. There they would rest before taking the Water Route which only kings of the air can follow. Straight across the storm-swept Atlantic and the treacherous Gulf of Mexico, two thousand four hundred miles, they would fly, on their way to their next stop on the pampas of the Argentine. Fainter-hearted flyers chose the circuitous Island Passage, across Cuba, Porto Rico, and the Antilles, to the northern shore of South America. The chuck-will's-widow of the Gulf States, cuckoos from New England, gray-checked thrushes from Quebec, bank-swallows from Labrador, black-poll warblers from Alaska, and hosts and myriads of bobolinks from everywhere took the Bobolink Route from Florida to Cuba, and the seven hundred miles across the Gulf to South America.

Only a few of the highest-powered water-birds shared the Water Route with the plover. When this flock started, they had circled and wheeled and swooped in the wonderful evolutions of their kind, but had finally swung into their journey-gait—and when a plover settles down to straight flying, it would seem to be safe from anything slower than a bullet.

Far above the flock floated what seemed a fleck of white cloud blown up from the lower levels. As it drifted swiftly down toward the speeding plover, it grew into a great bird sparsely mottled with pearl-gray, whose pointed wings had a spread of nearly five feet. Driven down from Greenland by cold and famine, a white gyrfalcon was haunting these solitudes like some grim ghost of the upper sky. His fierce eyes were of a glittering black, as was the tip of his blue hooked beak.

As the plover whizzed southward on their way to Summer, some shadow of the coming of the falcon must have fallen upon them; for suddenly the whole flock broke and scattered through the sky, like a dropped handful of beads, each bird twisting and doubling through the air, yet still shooting ever southward at a speed which few other flyers could have equaled. Unluckily for the plover, the gyrfalcon is perhaps the fastest bird that flies, and moreover it has all of that mysterious gift of the falcon family of following automatically every double and twist and turn of any bird which it elects to pursue. This one chose his victim, and in a flash was following it through the sky. Here and there, back and forth, up and down, in dizzy circles and bewildering curves, the great hawk sped after the largest of the plover. As if driven in some invisible tandem, the white form of the falcon kept an exact distance from the plover, until at last the latter gave up circling and doubling for a stretch of straight flight. In an instant, the flashing white wings of the falcon were above it; there was the same arrowy pounce with which the lesser falcon had struck down the teal; and, a moment later, the gyrfalcon had caught the falling body, and was volplaning down to earth with the dead plover in its claws.

For a time after this tragedy the sky seemed empty, as the scattered plover passed out of sight, to come together as a flock many miles beyond. Then a multitude of tiny black specks showed for an instant in the blue. They seemed almost like motes in the sunlight, save that, instead of dancing up and down, they shot forward with an almost inconceivable swiftness. It was as if a stream of bullets had suddenly become visible. Immeasurably faster than any bird of even twice its size, a flock of ruby-throated humming-birds, the smallest birds in the world, sped unfalteringly toward the sunland of the South. Their buzzing flight had a dipping, rolling motion, as they disappeared in the distance on their way to the Gulf of Mexico, whose seven hundred miles of treacherous water they would cover without a rest.

As the setting sun approached the rim of the world, the lower clouds changed from banks of snow into masses of fuming gold, splashed and blotched with an intolerable crimson. Again the sky was full of birds. Those last of the day-flyers were the swallow-folk. White-bellied tree swallows; barn swallows, with long forked tails; cliff swallows, with cream-white foreheads; bank and rough-winged swallows, with brown backs—the air was full of their whirling, curving flight. With them went their big brothers, the purple martins, and the night hawks, with their white-barred wings, which at times, as they whirled downward, made a hollow twanging noise. With the flock, too, were the swifts, who sleep and nest in chimneys, and whose winter home no man yet has discovered.

As the turquoise of the curved sky deepened into sapphire, a shadowy figure came toward the circling, flashing throng of swifts and swallows. The newcomer's great bare wings seemed made of sections of brown parchment jointed together unlike those of any bird. Nor did any bird ever wear soft brown fur frosted with silver, nor have wide flappy ears and a hobgoblin face. Miles above the ground this earth-born mammal was beating the birds in their own element. None of the swallows showed any alarm as the stranger overtook them, for they recognized him as the hoary bat, the largest of North American bats, who migrates with the swallows and, like them, feeds only on insects.

As the sun sank lower, the great company of the bird-folk swooped down toward the earth, for swallows, swifts, and martins are all day-flyers. Not so with the bat. In the fading light, he flew steadily southward alone—but not for long. Up from earth came again the great gyrfalcon, his fierce hunger unsatisfied with the few mouthfuls torn from the plover's plump breast. As his fierce eyes caught sight of the flitting bat, his wings flashed through the air with the same speed that had overtaken the plover. No bird that flies could have kept ahead of the rush of the great hawk through the air.

A mammal, however, is farther along in the scale of life than a bird, and more efficient, even as a flyer. As the pricked-up ears of the bat caught the swish of the falcon's wings, the beats of its own skin-covered pair increased, and the bird suddenly ceased to gain. Disdaining to double or zigzag, the great bat flew the straightaway race which the falcon loves, and which would have meant quick death to any bird who tried it. Skin, however, makes a better flying surface than feathers, and slowly but unmistakably the bat began to draw away from its pursuer. The gyrfalcon is the speed-king among birds, but the hoary bat is faster still. Five, ten, fifteen minutes passed before the hawk realized that he was being outflown. Increase his speed as he would, the bat, in an effortless nonchalant manner, moved farther away. When only a streak of silver sky, with a shoal of little violet clouds, was left of the daylight the gyrfalcon gave up the chase. As he swooped down to earth like a white meteor, the brown figure of the bat disappeared in the violet twilight, beating, beating his way south.

As the sky darkened to a peacock-blue, and a faint amber band in the west tried to bar the dark, suddenly the star-shine was full of soft pipings and chirpings. The night-flyers had begun their journey, and were calling back and forth heartening each other as they flew through the long dark hours. Against the golden disc of the rising moon a continuous procession of tiny black figures showed the whole sky to be full of these pilgrims from the north. The "chink, chink" of the bobolinks dropped through the stillness like silver coins; and from higher up came the "tsip, tsip, tsip" of the black-poll warblers, all the way from the Magdalen Islands. With them were a score or so of others of the great warbler family. Black-throated blues, Cape Mays, redstarts, golden-wings, yellow warblers, black-throated greens, magnolias, myrtles, and tiny parulas—myriads of this many-colored family were traveling together through the sky. With them went the vireos, the orioles, the tanagers, and four different kinds of thrushes, with a dozen or so other varieties of birds following.

Most of them had put on their traveling clothes for the long journey. The tanagers had laid aside their crimson and black, and wore yellowish-green suits. The indigo bird had lost his vivid blue, the rose stain of the rose-breasted grosbeak was gone, along with the white cheeks of the black-poll warbler and the black throat of the black-throated green, while the bobolinks wore sober coats of olive-buff streaked with black, in place of their cream-white and velvet black.

Once during the night, as the army crossed an Atlantic cape, a lighthouse flashed its fatal eye at them. Immediately the ranks of the flyers broke, and in confused groups they circled around and around the witch-fire which no bird may pass. For hours they flew in dizzying circles, until, weary and bewildered, some of the weaker ones began to sink toward the dark water. Fortunately for them, at midnight the color of the light changed from white to red. Instantly the prisoners were freed from the spell which only the white light lays upon them, and in a minute the air was filled with glad flight-calls, as the released ranks hurried on and away through the dark.

All night long they flew steadily, and turned earthward only at sunrise. As the weary flyers sought the trees and fields for rest and food, overhead, against a crimson and gold dawn, passed the long-distance champion of the skies—the Arctic tern, with its snow-white breast, black head, curved wings, and forked tail. Nesting as far north as it can find land, only seven and a half degrees from the Pole, it flies eleven thousand miles to the Antarctic, and, ranging from pole to pole, sees more daylight than any other creature. For eight months of its year it never knows night, and during the other four has more daylight than dark. Scorner of all lands, tireless, unresting, this dweller in the loneliest places of earth flashed white across the dawn-sky—and was gone.