A Florida Sketch Book - Bradford Torrey
At least four of my longer excursions into the surrounding country
(long, not intrinsically, but by reason of the heat) were made with a
view to possible ivory-billed woodpeckers. Just out of the town
northward, beyond what appeared to be the court end of Marion Street,
the principal business street of the city, I had accosted a gentleman in
a dooryard in front of a long, low, vine-covered, romantic-looking
house. He was evidently at home, and not so busy as to make an
interruption probably intrusive. I inquired the name of a tree, I
believe. At all events, I engaged him in conversation, and found him
most agreeable--an Ohio gentleman, a man of science, who had been in the
South long enough to have acquired large measures of Southern
_insouciance_ (there are times when a French word has a politer sound
than any English equivalent), which takes life as made for something
better than worry and pleasanter than hard work. He had seen
ivory-bills, he said, and thought I might be equally fortunate if I
would visit a certain swamp, about which he would tell me, or, better
still, if I would go out to Lake Bradford.
First, because it was nearer, I went to the swamp, taking an early
breakfast and setting forth in a fog that was almost a mist, to make as
much of the distance as possible before the sun came out. My course lay
westward, some four miles, along the railway track, which, thanks to
somebody, is provided with a comfortable footpath of hard clay covering
the sleepers midway between the rails. If all railroads were thus
furnished they might be recommended as among the best of routes for
walking naturalists, since they go straight through the wild country.
This one carried me by turns through woodland and cultivated field,
upland and swamp, pine land and hammock; and, happily, my expectations
of the ivory-bill were not lively enough to quicken my steps or render
me heedless of things along the way.
Here I was equally surprised and delighted by the sight of yellow
jessamine still in flower more than a month after I had seen the end of
its brief season, only a hundred miles further south. So great,
apparently, is the difference between the peninsula and this Tallahassee
hill-country, which by its physical geography seems rather to be a part
of Georgia than of Florida. Here, too, the pink azalea was at its
prettiest, and the flowering dogwood, also, true queen of the woods in
Florida as in Massachusetts. The fringe-bush, likewise, stood here and
there in solitary state, and thorn-bushes flourished in bewildering
variety.
Nearer the track were the omnipresent blackberry vines, some patches of
which are especially remembered for their bright rosy flowers.
Out of the dense vegetation of a swamp came the cries of Florida
gallinules, and then, of a sudden, I caught, or seemed to catch, the
sweet _kurwee_ whistle of a Carolina rail. Instinctively I turned my ear
for its repetition, and by so doing admitted to myself that I was not
certain of what I had heard, although the sora's call is familiar, and
the bird was reasonably near. I had been taken unawares, and every
ornithologist knows how hard it is to be sure of one's self in such a
case. He knows, too, how uncertain he feels of any brother observer who
in a similar case seems troubled by no distrust of his own senses. The
whistle, whatever it had been, was not repeated, and I lost my only
opportunity of adding the sora's name to my Florida catalogue--a loss,
fortunately, of no consequence to any but myself, since the bird is well
known as a winter visitor to the State.
Further along, a great blue heron was stalking about the edge of a
marshy pool, and further still, in a woody swamp, stood three little
blue herons, one of them in white plumage. In the drier and more open
parts of the way cardinals, mocking-birds, and thrashers were singing,
ground doves were cooing, quails were prophesying, and loggerhead
shrikes sat, trim and silent, on the telegraph wire. In the pine lands
were plenty of brown-headed nuthatches, full, as always, of friendly
gossip; two red-shouldered hawks, for whom life seemed to wear a more
serious aspect; three Maryland yellow throats; a pair of bluebirds, rare
enough now to be twice welcome; a black-and-white creeper, and a yellow
redpoll warbler. In the same pine woods, too, there was much good music:
house wrens, Carolina wrens, red-eyed and white-eyed vireos, pine
warblers, yellow-throated warblers, blue yellowbacks, red-eyed chewinks,
and, twice welcome, like the bluebirds, a Carolina chickadee.
A little beyond this point, in a cut through a low sand bank, I found
two pairs of rough-winged swallows, and stopped for some time to stare
at them, being myself, meanwhile, a gazing-stock for two or three
negroes lounging about the door of a cabin not far away. It is a happy
chance when a man's time is _doubly_ improved. Two of the birds--the
first ones I had ever seen, to be sure of them--perched directly before
me on the wire, one facing me, the other with his back turned. It was
kindly done; and then, as if still further to gratify my curiosity, they
visited a hole in the bank. A second hole was doubtless the property of
the other pair. Living alternately in heaven and in a hole in the
ground, they wore the livery of the earth.
"They are not fair to outward view
As many swallows be,"
I said to myself. But I was not the less glad to see them.
I should have been gladder for a sight of the big woodpecker, whose
reputed dwelling-place lay not far ahead. But, though I waited and
listened, and went through the swamp, and beyond it, I heard no strange
shout, nor saw any strange bird; and toward noon, just as the sun
brushed away the fog, I left the railway track for a carriage by-way
which, I felt sure, must somehow bring me back to the city. And so it
did, past here and there a house, till I came to the main road, and then
to the Murat estate, and was again on familiar ground.
Two mornings afterward I made another early and foggy start, this time
for Lake Bradford. My instructions were to follow the railway for a mile
or so beyond the station, and then take a road bearing away sharply to
the left. This I did, making sure I was on the right road by inquiring
of the first man I saw--a negro at work before his cabin. I had gone
perhaps half a mile further when a white man, on his way after a load of
wood, as I judged, drove up behind me. "Won't you ride?" he asked. "You
are going to Lake Bradford, I believe, and I am going a piece in the
same direction." I jumped up behind (the wagon consisting of two long
planks fastened to the two axles), thankful, but not without a little
bewilderment. The good-hearted negro, it appeared, had asked the man to
look out for me; and he, on his part, seemed glad to do a kindness as
well as to find company. We jolted along, chatting at arm's length, as
it were, about this and that. He knew nothing of the ivory-bill; but
wild turkeys--oh, yes, he had seen a flock of eight, as well as he could
count, not long before, crossing the road in the very woods through
which I was going. As for snakes, they were plenty enough, he guessed.
One of his horses was bitten while ploughing, and died in half an hour.
(A Florida man who cannot tell at least one snake story may be set down
as having land to sell.) He thought it a pretty good jaunt to the lake,
and the road wasn't any too plain, though no doubt I should get there;
but I began to perceive that a white man who traveled such distances on
foot in that country was more of a _rara avis_ than any woodpecker.
Our roads diverged after a while, and my own soon ran into a wood with
an undergrowth of saw palmetto. This was the place for the ivory-bill,
and as at the swamp two days before, so now I stopped and listened, and
then stopped and listened again. The Fates were still against me. There
was neither woodpecker nor turkey, and I pushed on, mostly through pine
woods--full of birds, but nothing new--till I came out at the lake.
Here, beside an idle sawmill and heaps of sawdust, I was greeted by a
solitary negro, well along in years, who demanded, in a tone of almost
comical astonishment, where in the world I had come from. I told him
from Tallahassee, and he seemed so taken aback that I began to think I
must look uncommonly like an invalid, a "Northern consumptive," perhaps.
Otherwise, why should a walk of six miles, or something less, be treated
as such a marvel? However, the negro and I were soon on the friendliest
of terms, talking of the old times, the war, the prospects of the
colored people (the younger ones were fast going to the bad, he
thought), while I stood looking out over the lake, a pretty sheet of
water, surrounded mostly by cypress woods, but disfigured for the
present by the doings of lumbermen. What interested me most (such is the
fate of the devotee) was a single barn swallow, the first and only one
that I saw on my Southern trip.
On my way back to the city, after much fatherly advice about the road on
the part of the negro, who seemed to feel that I ran the greatest risk
of getting lost, I made two more additions to my Florida catalogue--the
wood duck and the yellow-billed cuckoo, the latter unexpectedly early
(April 11), since Mr. Chapman had recorded it as arriving at Gainesville
at a date sixteen days later than this.
I did not repeat my visit to Lake Bradford; but, not to give up the
ivory-bill too easily,--and because I must walk somewhere,--I went
again as far as the palmetto scrub. This time, though I still missed the
woodpecker, I was fortunate enough to come upon a turkey. In the
thickest part of the wood, as I turned a corner, there she stood before
me in the middle of the road. She ran along the horse-track for perhaps
a rod, and then disappeared among the palmetto leaves.
Meanwhile, two or three days before, while returning from St. Mark's,
whither I had gone for a day on the river, I had noticed from the car
window a swamp, or baygall, which looked so promising that I went the
very next morning to see what it would yield. I had taken it for a
cypress swamp, but it proved to be composed mainly of oaks; very tall
but rather slender trees, heavily draped with hanging moss and standing
in black water. Among them were the swollen stumps, three or four feet
high, of larger trees which had been felled. I pushed in through the
surrounding shrubbery and bay-trees, and waited for some time, leaning
against one of the larger trunks and listening to the noises, of which
the air of the swamp was full. Great-crested flycatchers, two Acadian
flycatchers, a multitude of blue yellow-backed warblers, and what I
supposed to be some loud-voiced frogs were especially conspicuous in the
concert; but a Carolina wren, a cardinal, a red-eyed vireo, and a
blue-gray gnatcatcher, the last with the merest thread of a voice,
contributed their share to the medley, and once a chickadee struck up
his sweet and gentle strain in the very depths of the swamp--like an
angel singing in hell.
My walk on the railway, that wonderful St. Mark's branch (I could never
have imagined the possibility of running trains over so crazy a track),
took me through the choicest of bird country. The bushes were alive, and
the air rang with music. In the midst of the chorus I suddenly caught
somewhere before me what I had no doubt was the song of a purple finch,
a bird that I had not yet seen in Florida. I quickened my steps, and to
my delight the singer proved to be a blue grosbeak. I had caught a
glimpse of one two days before, as I have described in another chapter,
but with no opportunity for a final identification. Here, as it soon
turned out, there were at least four birds, all males, and all singing;
chasing each other about after the most persistent fashion, in a piece
of close shrubbery with tall trees interspersed, and acting--the four
of them--just as two birds are often seen to do when contending for the
possession of a building site. At a first hearing the song seems not so
long sustained as the purple finch's commonly is, but exceedingly like
it in voice and manner, though not equal to it, I should be inclined to
say, in either respect. The birds made frequent use of a monosyllabic
call, corresponding to the calls of the purple finch and the
rose-breasted grosbeak, but readily distinguishable from both. I was
greatly pleased to see them, and thought them extremely handsome, with
their dark blue plumage set off by wing patches of rich chestnut.
A little farther, and I was saluted by the saucy cry of my first Florida
chat. The fellow had chosen just such a tangled thicket as he favors in
Massachusetts, and whistled and kept out of sight after the most
approved manner of his kind. On the other side of the track a white-eyed
vireo was asserting himself, as he had been doing since the day I
reached St. Augustine; but though he seems a pretty clever substitute
for the chat in the chat's absence, his light is quickly put out when
the clown himself steps into the ring. Ground doves cooed, cardinals
whistled, and mocking-birds sang and mocked by turns. Orchard orioles,
no unworthy companions of mocking-birds and cardinals, sang here and
there from a low treetop, especially in the vicinity of houses. To judge
from what I saw, they are among the most characteristic of Tallahassee
birds,--as numerous as Baltimore orioles are in Massachusetts towns,
and frequenting much the same kind of places. In one day's walk I
counted twenty-five. Elegantly dressed as they are,--and elegance is
better than brilliancy, perhaps, even in a bird,--they seem to be
thoroughly democratic. It was a pleasure to see them so fond of cabin
door-yards.
Of the other birds along the St. Mark's railway, let it be enough to
mention white-throated and white-crowned sparrows, red-eyed chewinks
(the white-eye was not found in the Tallahassee region), a red-bellied
woodpecker, two red-shouldered hawks, shrikes, kingbirds,
yellow-throated warblers, Maryland yellow-throats, pine warblers, palm
warblers,--which in spite of their name seek their summer homes north of
the United States,--myrtle warblers, now grown scarce, house wrens,
summer tanagers, and quails. The last-named birds, by the way, I had
expected to find known as "partridges" at the South, but as a matter of
fact I heard that name applied to them only once. On the St. Augustine
road, before breakfast, I met an old negro setting out for his day's
work behind a pair of oxen. "Taking some good exercise?" he asked, by
way of a neighborly greeting; and, not to be less neighborly than he, I
responded with some remark about a big shot-gun which occupied a
conspicuous place in his cart. "Oh," he said, "game is plenty out where
we are going, about eight miles, and I take the gun along." "What kind
of game?" "Well, sir, we may sometimes find a partridge." I smiled at
the anti-climax, but was glad to hear Bob White honored for once with
his Southern title.
A good many of my jaunts took me past the gallinule swamp before
mentioned, and almost always I stopped and went near. It was worth while
to hear the poultry cries of the gallinules if nothing more; and often
several of the birds would be seen swimming about among the big white
lilies and the green tussocks. Once I discovered one of them sitting
upright on a stake,--a precarious seat, off which he soon tumbled
awkwardly into the water. At another time, on the same stake, sat some
dark, strange-looking object. The opera-glass showed it at once to be a
large bird sitting with its back toward me, and holding its wings
uplifted in the familiar heraldic, _e-pluribus-unum_ attitude of our
American spread-eagle; but even then it was some seconds before I
recognized it as an anhinga,--water turkey,--though it was a male in
full nuptial garb. I drew nearer and nearer, and meanwhile it turned
squarely about,--a slow and ticklish operation,--so that its back was
presented to the sun; as if it had dried one side of its wings and
tail,--for the latter, too, was fully spread,--and now would dry the
other. There for some time it sat preening its feathers, with monstrous
twistings and untwistings of its snaky neck. If the chat is a clown, the
water turkey would make its fortune as a contortionist. Finally it rose,
circled about till it got well aloft, and then, setting its wings,
sailed away southward and vanished, leaving me in a state of wonder as
to where it had come from, and whether it was often to be seen in such a
place--perfectly open, close beside the highway, and not far from
houses. I did not expect ever to see another, but the next morning, on
my way up the railroad to pay a second visit to the ivory-bill's swamp,
I looked up by chance,--a brown thrush was singing on the telegraph
wire,--and saw two anhingas soaring overhead, their silvery wings
glistening in the sun as they wheeled. I kept my glass on them till the
distance swallowed them up.
Of one long forenoon's ramble I retain particular remembrance, not on
account of any birds, but for a half hour of pleasant human intercourse.
I went out of the city by an untried road, hoping to find some trace of
migrating birds, especially of certain warblers, the prospect of whose
acquaintance was one of the lesser considerations which had brought me
so far from home. No such trace appeared, however, nor, in my
fortnight's stay in Tallahassee, in almost the height of the migratory
season, did I, so far as I could tell, see a single passenger bird of
any sort. Some species arrived from the South--cuckoos and orioles, for
example; others, no doubt, took their departure for the North; but to
the best of my knowledge not one passed through. It was a strange
contrast to what is witnessed everywhere in New England. By some other
route swarms of birds must at that moment have been entering the United
States from Mexico and beyond; but unless my observation was at fault,--
and I am assured that sharper eyes than mine have had a similar
experience,--their line of march did not bring them into the Florida
hill-country. My morning's road not only showed me no birds, but led me
nowhere, and, growing discouraged, I turned back till I came to a lane
leading off to the left at right angles. This I followed so far that it
seemed wise, if possible, to make my way back to the city without
retracing my steps. Not to spend my strength for naught, however (the
noonday sun having always to be treated with respect), I made for a
solitary house in the distance. Another lane ran past it. That, perhaps,
would answer my purpose. I entered the yard, all ablaze with roses, and
in response to my knock a gentleman appeared upon the doorstep. Yes, he
said, the lane would carry me straight to the Meridian road (so I think
he called it), and thence into the city. "Past Dr. H.'s?" I asked.
"Yes." And then I knew where I was.
First, however, I must let my new acquaintance show me his garden. His
name was G., he said. Most likely I had heard of him, for the
legislature was just then having a good deal to say about his sheep, in
connection with some proposed dog-law. Did I like roses? As he talked he
cut one after another, naming each as he put it into my hand. Then I
must look at his Japanese persimmon trees, and many other things. Here
was a pretty shrub. Perhaps I could tell what it was by crushing and
smelling a leaf? No; it was something familiar; I sniffed, and looked
foolish, and after all he had to tell me its name--camphor. So we went
the rounds of the garden,--frightening a mocking-bird off her nest in an
orange-tree,--till my hands were full. It is too bad I have forgotten
how many pecan-trees he had planted, and how many sheep he kept. A
well-regulated memory would have held fast to such figures: mine is
certain only that there were four eggs in the mocking-bird's nest. Mr.
G. was a man of enterprise, at any rate; a match for any Yankee,
although he had come to Florida not from Yankeeland, but from northern
Georgia. I hope all his crops are still thriving, especially his white
roses and his Marshal Niels.
In the lane, after skirting some pleasant woods, which I meant to visit
again, but found no opportunity, I was suddenly assaulted by a pair of
brown thrashers, half beside themselves after their manner because of my
approach to their nest. How close my approach was I cannot say; but it
must be confessed that I played upon their fears to the utmost of my
ability, wishing to see as many of their neighbors as the disturbance
would bring together. Several other thrashers, a catbird, and two house
wrens appeared (all these, since "blood is thicker than water," may have
felt some special cousinly solicitude, for aught I know), with a
ruby-crowned kinglet and a field sparrow.
In the valley, near a little pond, as I came out into the Meridian road,
a solitary vireo was singing, in the very spot where one had been heard
six days before. Was it the same bird? I asked myself. And was it
settled for the summer? Such an explanation seemed the more likely
because I had found no solitary vireo anywhere else about the city,
though the species had been common earlier in the season in eastern and
southern Florida, where I had seen my last one--at New Smyrna--March 26.
At this same dip in the Meridian road, on a previous visit, I had
experienced one of the pleasantest of my Tallahassee sensations. The
morning was one of those when every bird is in tune. By the road side I
had just passed Carolina wrens, house wrens, a chipper, a field sparrow,
two thrashers, an abundance of chewinks, two orchard orioles, several
tanagers, a flock of quail, and mocking-birds and cardinals uncounted.
In a pine wood near by, a wood pewee, a pine warbler, a yellow-throated
warbler, and a pine-wood sparrow were singing--a most peculiarly select
and modest chorus. Just at the lowest point in the valley I stopped to
listen to a song which I did not recognize, but which, by and by, I
settled upon as probably the work of a freakish prairie warbler. At that
moment, as if to confirm my conjecture,--which in the retrospect becomes
almost ridiculous,--a prairie warbler hopped into sight on an outer twig
of the water-oak out of which the music had proceeded. Still something
said, "Are you sure?" and I stepped inside the fence. There on the
ground were two or three white-crowned sparrows, and in an instant the
truth of the case flashed upon me. I remembered the saying of a friend,
that the song of the white-crown had reminded him of the vesper sparrow
and the black-throated green warbler. That was my bird; and I listened
again, though I could no longer be said to feel in doubt. A long time I
waited. Again and again the birds sang, and at last I discovered one of
them perched at the top of the oak, tossing back his head and warbling
--a white-crowned sparrow: the one regular Massachusetts migrant which I
had often seen, but had never heard utter a sound.
The strain opens with smooth, sweet notes almost exactly like the
introductory syllables of the vesper sparrow. Then the tone changes, and
the remainder of the song is in something like the pleasingly hoarse
voice of a prairie warbler, or a black-throated green. It is soft and
very pretty; not so perfect a piece of art as the vesper sparrow's
tune,--few bird-songs are,--but taking for its very oddity, and at the
same time tender and sweet. More than one writer has described it as
resembling the song of the white-throat. Even Minot, who in general was
the most painstaking and accurate of observers, as he is one of the most
interesting of our systematic writers, says that the two songs are
"almost exactly" alike. There could be no better example of the
fallibility which attaches, and in the nature of the case must attach,
to all writing upon such subjects. The two songs have about as much in
common as those of the hermit thrush and the brown thrasher, or those of
the song sparrow and the chipper. In other words, they have nothing in
common. Probably in Minot's case, as in so many others of a similar
nature, the simple explanation is that when he thought he was listening
to one bird he was really listening to another.
The Tallahassee road to which I had oftenest resorted, to which, now,
from far Massachusetts, I oftenest look back, the St. Augustine road, so
called, I have spoken of elsewhere. Thither, after packing my trunk on
the morning of the 18th, I betook myself for a farewell stroll. My
holiday was done. For the last time, perhaps, I listened to the
mocking-bird and the cardinal, as by and by, when the grand holiday is
over, I shall listen to my last wood thrush and my last bluebird. But
what then? Florida fields are still bright, and neither mocking-bird nor
cardinal knows aught of my absence. And so it _will_ be.
"When you and I behind the Veil are past,
Oh, but the long, long while the World shall last."
None the less, it is good to have lived our day and taken our peep at
the mighty show. Ten thousand things we may have fretted ourselves
about, uselessly or worse. But to have lived in the sun, to have loved
natural beauty, to have felt the majesty of trees, to have enjoyed the
sweetness of flowers and the music of birds,--so much, at least, is not
vanity nor vexation of spirit.