No More Learning

The ducks alight at this season in the still water, in company with
the gulls, which do not fail to improve an east wind to visit our
meadows, and swim about by twos and threes, pluming themselves, and
diving to peck at the root of the lily, and the cranberries which the
frost has not loosened. The first flock of geese is seen beating to
north, in long harrows and waving lines; the jingle of the song
sparrow salutes us from the shrubs and fences; the plaintive note of
the lark comes clear and sweet from the meadow; and the bluebird, like
an azure ray, glances past us in our walk. The fish hawk, too, is
occasionally seen at this season sailing majestically over the water,
and he who has once observed it will not soon forget the majesty of
its flight. It sails the air like a ship of the line, worthy to
struggle with the elements, falling back from time to time like a ship
on its beam ends, and holding its talons up as if ready for the
arrows, in the attitude of the national bird. It is a great presence,
as of the master of river and forest. Its eye would not quail before
the owner of the soil, but make him feel like an intruder on its
domains. And then its retreat, sailing so steadily away, is a kind of
advance. I have by me one of a pair of ospreys, which have for some
years fished in this vicinity, shot by a neighboring pond, measuring
more than two feet in length, and six in the stretch of its wings.
Nuttall mentions that "the ancients, particularly Aristotle, pretended
that the ospreys taught their young to gaze at the sun, and those who
were unable to do so were destroyed. Linnaeus even believed, on ancient
authority, that one of the feet of this bird had all the toes divided,
while the other was partly webbed, so that it could swim with one
foot, and grasp a fish with the other. " But that educated eye is now
dim, and those talons are nerveless. Its shrill scream seems yet to
linger in its throat, and the roar of the sea in its wings. There is
the tyranny of Jove in its claws, and his wrath in the erectile
feathers of the head and neck. It reminds me of the Argonautic
expedition, and would inspire the dullest to take flight over
Parnassus.

The booming of the bittern, described by Goldsmith and Nuttall, is
frequently heard in our fens, in the morning and evening, sounding
like a pump, or the chopping of wood in a frosty morning in some
distant farm-yard.
The manner in which this sound is produced I have
not seen anywhere described. On one occasion, the bird has been seen
by one of my neighbors to thrust its bill into the water, and suck up
as much as it could hold, then, raising its head, it pumped it out
again with four or five heaves of the neck, throwing it two or three
feet, and making the sound each time.

At length the summer's eternity is ushered in by the cackle of the
flicker among the oaks on the hillside, and a new dynasty begins with
calm security.

In May and June the woodland quire is in full tune, and, given the
immense spaces of hollow air, and this curious human ear, one does
not see how the void could be better filled.

Each summer sound
Is a summer round.

As the season advances, and those birds which make us but a passing
visit depart, the woods become silent again, and but few feathers
ruffle the drowsy air. But the solitary rambler may still find a
response and expression for every mood in the depths of the wood.

Sometimes I hear the veery's[5] clarion,
Or brazen trump of the impatient jay,
And in secluded woods the chickadee
Doles out her scanty notes, which sing the praise
Of heroes, and set forth the loveliness
Of virtue evermore.

The phoebe still sings in harmony with the sultry weather by the
brink of the pond, nor are the desultory hours of noon in the midst of
the village without their minstrel.

Upon the lofty elm-tree sprays
The vireo rings the changes sweet,
During the trivial summer days,
Striving to lift our thoughts above the street.

With the autumn begins in some measure a new spring. The plover is
heard whistling high in the air over the dry pastures, the finches
flit from tree to tree, the bobolinks and flickers fly in flocks, and
the goldfinch rides on the earliest blast, like a winged hyla peeping
amid the rustle of the leaves. The crows, too, begin now to
congregate; you may stand and count them as they fly low and
straggling over the landscape, singly or by twos and threes, at
intervals of half a mile, until a hundred have passed.

I have seen it suggested somewhere that the crow was brought to this
country by the white man; but I shall as soon believe that the white
man planted these pines and hemlocks. He is no spaniel to follow our
steps; but rather flits about the clearings like the dusky spirit of
the Indian, reminding me oftener of Philip and Powhatan than of
Winthrop and Smith. He is a relic of the dark ages.