Two or three mornings ago I met a friend in the road, a farmer, one of the happy men, good to talk with, who glory in their work. A phœbe was calling from the top of an elm, and as we were near the farmer’s house I asked, “How long has the phœbe been here?” He looked up, saw the bird, and answered with a smile, “He must have just come. I haven2’t heard him before.” I made some remark about its being pleasant to have such creatures with us again, and he responded, as I knew he would, in the heartiest3 manner. “Oh, I do love to see them!” he said.
I was reminded of a lady of whom I had been told the day before. She had felt obliged, as I heard the story, to attend a meeting of the woman’s club, but remarked to one of her assembled sisters that she had had half a mind to stay at home. The truth was, she explained, that two or three meadow larks4 were singing gloriously in the rear of her house, and she could hardly bear to come away and leave them. I hope her self-denial was rewarded.
On the same day I heard of a servant who hastened into the sitting-room5 to say to her mistress, “Oh, Mrs. ——! there’s a little bird out in the hedge singing to beat the band.” The newcomer proved to be a song sparrow, and the lady of the house was fully6 as enthusiastic as the servant in her welcome of it, though I dare say she expressed herself in less picturesque7 language.
And I know another house, still nearer home, where a few days ago the dinner-table was actually deserted8 for a time, in the very midst of the meal. Three bluebirds, with snowbirds, goldfinches, and chickadees, had suddenly appeared under the windows. “There! there! In the maple9! Will you look at him! Oh-h-h!” The dinner might “get cold,” as the prudent10 housewife suggested, but it did not matter. Such a color as those bluebirds displayed was better than anything that an eater could put into his mouth.
Yes, as I say, the birds are having their innings. In whichever direction I walk, in town or country, I am asked about them. A schoolgirl stopped me in the street the other day. “Can you tell me what that bird is?” she inquired. A white-breasted nuthatch was whistling over our heads in a shade tree. Possibly the study of live birds will be as fashionable a few years hence as the wearing of dead ones was a few years ago.
On the 22d of March, as I stood listening to a most uncommonly11 brilliant song sparrow (now is the time for such things, before the greater artists monopolize12 our attention) and the outgivings of a too chary13 fox sparrow, the first cowbird of the year announced himself. Polygamist, shirk, and, by all our human standards, general reprobate14, I was still glad to hear him. He is what he was made. Few birds are more interesting, psychologically, if one wishes an object of study.
Saturday, the 23d, was cloudless, a rare event at this time of the year, and with an outdoor neighbor I made an excursion to Wayland, to see what might be visible and audible in those broad Sudbury River meadows.
We took a “round” familiar to us (to one of us, at least), down the road to the north bridge and causeway, thence through the woods on the opposite side of the river to a main thoroughfare, or turnpike, and back to the village again over the south causeway. Meadow larks were in full tune15, now from a treetop, now from a fence-post. They were my first ones since the autumn, and their music was relished16 accordingly.
As we stopped on the bridge to look down the blue river and across the overflowed17 meadow lands to a gray, flat-topped hill far beyond toward Concord18, we suddenly discovered a shining white object on the surface of the water. It proved to be a duck, one of two, jet black and snow white, and presumably a merganser, though it was too far away to be made out with positiveness. Thoreau, I remember, makes frequent mention of mergansers and golden-eyes in his March journals.
We were admiring this couple (a couple only in the looser sense of the word, for both birds were drakes), when all at once some small far-away object “swam into my ken19.” “A swallow!” said I, and even as I spoke20 a second one came into the field of the glass. Yes, there they were, two white-breasted swallows, sailing about over the meadows on the 23d of March. How unspeakably beautiful they looked, their lustrous21 blue-green backs with the bright sun shining on them! The date must constitute a “record,” I assured my companion. Once before, at least, I had seen swallows in March, but that, I felt certain, was on one of the last days of the month. Strange that such creatures should have ventured so far northward22 thus early. If Gilbert White could see them, he would be more firmly convinced than ever that swallows “lay themselves up in holes and caverns23, and do, insect-like and bat-like, come forth24 at mild times, and then retire again to their latebræ.” For my own part, not being able to accept this doctrine25, I contented26 myself with Americanizing Shakespeare. “Swallows,” said I,—
“Swallows that come before the daffodil dares,
And take the winds of March with beauty.”
I could hardly recover from my excitement, which was renewed an hour afterward27 when, on the southern causeway, a third bird (or one of the same two) passed near us. But now see how untrustworthy a clerk a man’s memory is! On reaching home I turned at once to my book of dates, and behold28, it was exactly four years ago to an hour, March 23, 1897, that I saw two white-breasted swallows about a pond here in Wellesley. We had broken no “record,” after all. But I imagine the Rev29. Gilbert White saying, “Yes, yes; you will notice that in both cases the birds were seen in the immediate30 neighborhood of water.” And there is no doubt that such places are the ones in which to look most hopefully for the first swallows of the year.
All this time a herring gull31, a great beauty in high plumage, was sailing up and down the meadows like a larger swallow. He, too, was one of Thoreau’s river friends at this season; and since we are talking of dates, I note it as a coincidence that precisely32 forty-two years ago (March 23, 1859), he entered in his journal that he saw “come slowly flying from the southwest a great gull, of voracious33 form, which at length, by a sudden and steep descent, alighted in Fair Haven Pond [a wide place in the river], scaring up a crow which was seeking its food on the edge of the ice.” Our bird, also, made one “sudden and steep descent,” and picked from the ice some small, dark-colored object, which at our distance might have been a dead leaf. But if Thoreau saw ducks and gulls34, he saw no March swallows. His earliest date for them, so far as the printed journals show, seems to have been April 5.
The woods brought us nothing,—beyond a chickadee or two,—but we were hardly out of them before we heard the blue jay scream of a red-shouldered hawk35, and presently saw first one bird and then another (rusty shoulder and all) sailing above us. A grand sight it is, a soaring and diving hawk. May it never become less frequent. I must quote Thoreau once more, this time from memory, and for substance only. I am with him, heart and soul, when he prays for more hawks36, though at the cost of fewer chickens. And I like the spirit of a friend of mine who girdled a tall pine tree in his woods, that it might serve as a perching station for such visitors.
As we approached the village again, we came upon two phœbes. Like the white-breasted swallow, the phœbe winters in Florida, and is by a long time the earliest member of its family to arrive in New England. Red-winged blackbirds were numerous, of course, every one a male, and in one place we passed a flock of crow blackbirds feeding on the ground.
Not the least interesting bird of the forenoon was a shrike, sitting motionless and dumb in an apple tree. The shrike has all the attractiveness of singularity. He is no lover of his kind, save as the lion loves the lamb and the hawk the chicken. Lonesome? No, I thank you. Except in breeding-time, he is sufficient unto himself. Even when he happens to feel like conversation, he goes[241] not in search of company. He is like the amiable37 philosopher who was asked by some busybody why he so often talked to himself. “Well,” said he, “for two reasons: first, I like to talk to a sensible man, and secondly38, I like to hear a sensible man talk.” In the present instance the shrike may very well have considered that there was little occasion for his talking, either to himself or to anybody else, since a bunch of twenty masculine redwings in some willow39 trees near by were chattering40 in chorus until, to use a good Old Colony phrase, a man could hardly hear himself think. Blackbird loquacity41, each particular bird sputtering42 “to beat the band,” is one of the wonders of the world.
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1
stolid
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| adj.无动于衷的，感情麻木的 | |
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haven
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| n.安全的地方，避难所，庇护所 | |
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heartiest
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| 亲切的( hearty的最高级 )； 热诚的； 健壮的； 精神饱满的 | |
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4
larks
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| n.百灵科鸟（尤指云雀）( lark的名词复数 )；一大早就起床；鸡鸣即起；（因太费力而不想干时说）算了v.百灵科鸟（尤指云雀）( lark的第三人称单数 )；一大早就起床；鸡鸣即起；（因太费力而不想干时说）算了 | |
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5
sitting-room
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| n.（BrE）客厅，起居室 | |
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fully
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| adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地 | |
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picturesque
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| adj.美丽如画的，（语言）生动的，绘声绘色的 | |
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deserted
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| adj.荒芜的，荒废的，无人的，被遗弃的 | |
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maple
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| n.槭树，枫树，槭木 | |
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prudent
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| adj.谨慎的，有远见的，精打细算的 | |
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uncommonly
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| adv. 稀罕(极，非常) | |
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monopolize
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| v.垄断，独占，专营 | |
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13
chary
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| adj.谨慎的，细心的 | |
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reprobate
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| n.无赖汉；堕落的人 | |
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15
tune
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| n.调子；和谐，协调；v.调音，调节，调整 | |
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16
relished
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| v.欣赏( relish的过去式和过去分词 )；从…获得乐趣；渴望 | |
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17
overflowed
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| 溢出的 | |
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concord
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| n.和谐；协调 | |
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ken
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| n.视野，知识领域 | |
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spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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lustrous
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| adj.有光泽的；光辉的 | |
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northward
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| adv.向北；n.北方的地区 | |
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23
caverns
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| 大山洞，大洞穴( cavern的名词复数 ) | |
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forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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doctrine
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| n.教义；主义；学说 | |
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contented
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| adj.满意的，安心的，知足的 | |
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afterward
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| adv.后来；以后 | |
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behold
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| v.看，注视，看到 | |
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rev
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| v.发动机旋转，加快速度 | |
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immediate
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| adj.立即的；直接的，最接近的；紧靠的 | |
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gull
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| n.鸥；受骗的人；v.欺诈 | |
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32
precisely
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| adv.恰好，正好，精确地，细致地 | |
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voracious
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| adj.狼吞虎咽的，贪婪的 | |
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34
gulls
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| n.鸥( gull的名词复数 )v.欺骗某人( gull的第三人称单数 ) | |
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35
hawk
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| n.鹰，骗子；鹰派成员 | |
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36
hawks
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| 鹰( hawk的名词复数 )； 鹰派人物，主战派人物 | |
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37
amiable
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| adj.和蔼可亲的，友善的，亲切的 | |
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secondly
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| adv.第二，其次 | |
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39
willow
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| n.柳树 | |
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40
chattering
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| n. （机器振动发出的）咔嗒声，(鸟等)鸣，啁啾 adj. 喋喋不休的，啾啾声的 动词chatter的现在分词形式 | |
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41
loquacity
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| n.多话，饶舌 | |
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42
sputtering
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| n.反应溅射法；飞溅；阴极真空喷镀；喷射v.唾沫飞溅( sputter的现在分词 )；发劈啪声；喷出；飞溅出 | |
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