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IN THE OPEN

INTIMATE STUDIES
AND APPRECIATIONS OF
NATURE BY

STANTON DAVIS KIRKHAM

AUTHOR OF

"WHERE DWELLS THE SOUL SERENE"
"THE MINISTRY OF BEAUTY"

"_Over and above a healthy
curiosity, or any scientific
acquaintance, it is the
companionship of the woods
and fields which counts--
a real friendship for birds
and bees and flowers._"

PAUL ELDER & COMPANY

SAN FRANCISCO AND NEW YORK




_Copyright, 1908
by_ PAUL ELDER AND COMPANY




TO MY WIFE
MARY WILLIAMS KIRKHAM
THIS BOOK IS
AFFECTIONATELY
DEDICATED




PREFACE


_There is an estate on which we pay no tax and which is not susceptible
of improvement. It is of indefinite extent and is to be reached by
taking the road to the nearest woods and fields. While this is quite as
valuable as any property we may possess, as a matter of fact few assert
their title to it._

_Nature is in herself a perpetual invitation to come into the open. The
woods are an unfailing resource; the mountains and the sea,
companionable. To count among one's friends, the birds and flowers and
trees is surely worth while; for to come upon a new flower is then in
the nature of an agreeable event, and a chance meeting with a bird may
lend a pleasant flavor to the day._




CONTENTS


PREFACE                   v

THE POINT OF VIEW         1

SIGNS OF SPRING          11

BIRD LIFE                22

SONGS OF THE WOODS       40

WILD GARDENS             56

WEEDS                    69

INSECT LORE              78

THE WAYS OF THE ANT      94

AUTUMN STUDIES          113

PASTURE STONES          127

NEIGHBORS               136

THE WINTER WOODS        153

LAUGHING WATERS         164

THE MOUNTAINS           173

THE FOREST              185

THE SEA                 196

INDEX                   209


     _A flock of wild geese on the wing is no less than an
     inspiration. When that strong-voiced, stout-hearted company
     of pioneers pass overhead, our thoughts ascend and sail with
     them over the roofs of the world. As band after band come
     into the field of vision--minute glittering specks in the
     distant blue--to cross the golden sea of the sunset and
     disappear in the northern twilight, their faint melodious
     honk is an Orphean strain drawing irresistibly._

     AFTER THE PAINTING BY
     LOUIS AGASSIZ FUERTES

[Illustration]




THE POINT OF VIEW


Nature is in herself a perpetual invitation: the birds call, the trees
beckon and the winds whisper to us. After the unfeeling pavements, the
yielding springy turf of the fields has a sympathy with the feet and
invites us to walk. It is good to hear again the fine long-drawn note
of the meadow-lark--voice of the early year,--the first bluebird's
warble, the field-sparrow's trill, the untamed melody of the kinglet--a
magic flute in the wilderness--and to see the ruby crown of the beloved
sprite. It is good to inhale the mint crushed underfoot and to roll
between the fingers the new leaves of the sweetbrier; to see again the
first anemones--the wind-children,--the mandrake's canopies, the
nestling erythronium and the spring beauty, like a delicate carpet; or
to seek the clintonia in its secluded haunts, and to feel the old
childlike joy at sight of lady's-slippers.

It is worth while to be out-of-doors all of one day, now and then, and
to really _know_ what is morning and what evening; to observe the
progress of the day as one might attend a spectacle, though this
requires leisure and a free mind. The spirit of the woods will not lend
itself to a mere fair-weather devotion. You must cast in your lot with
the wild and take such weather as befalls. If you do not now and then
spend a day in the snow, you miss some impressions that no fair weather
can give. When you have walked for a time in the spring shower, you
have a new and larger sympathy with the fields. The shining leaves,
glistening twigs, jeweled cobwebs and the gentle cadence of the falling
rain all tell you it is no time to stay indoors.

Life in the woods sharpens the nose, the eyes, the ears. There are
nose-feasts, eye-feasts, ear-feasts. What if the frost-grapes are
sour--they are fair to look at. Some things are for the palate and some
for the eye. The fragrance of blackberries is as delicate as the
flavor, a spicy aroma, a woodsy bouquet, and to eat without seeing or
smelling is to lose much. Clustered cherries, so lustrous black with
their red stems, refresh the inner and the outer man. You may safely
become a gourmand with respect to these wild flavors. Their virtue is
of the volatile sort that will not stand bottling; it will not enter
into essence or tincture. You must yourself go out and pick the cherry
under a September sky and in the presence of the first glowing leaves
of sumac and Virginia creeper.

Does not the bayberry revive and exhilarate the walker, as
smelling-salts restore fainting women? You have but to roll the waxen
berry in the fingers, or crush the leaf, to feel that indefinable
thrill which belongs to the woods, to the open air--the free life.
Another vigorous and stimulating odor is the fragrance of green
butternuts, which contains the goodness, the sweetness, the very marrow
of the woods, and calls out the natural and unaffected, as a strain of
music arouses the heroic. The tartness of the barberry matches the
crispness of the air and rebukes the lack of vigor in us. No true child
can resist the lure of wintergreen berries, while to nibble the bark of
a fresh young sassafras shoot admits us to some closer association with
Nature. A whiff of balsam is an invitation to share the abandon of the
woods, and awakens memories of the halcyon days, the shining hours,
when nutting and berrying were the real things of life.

One who is possessed with the idea of finding a certain bird or plant
is in a fair way to the discovery, and sooner or later each will come
into the field of vision. How the robin discovers the worm is a mystery
to be explained on the score of _attention_; it is perfect
concentration on a single point, with faculties trained in that
direction. That the footsteps of ants were audible had not occurred to
me till one day in watching the progress of the annual raid of the red
ants upon the black colonies, I plainly heard the patter of their feet,
as the column marched at double-quick over the floor of dry leaves.
There are many sounds in Nature that only become evident when we give
absolute attention, when we become all ear,--as there are things seen
only when we become for the time an eye.

Sensitive and sympathetic natures rarely confuse one person with
another, whereas the cold or obtuse really never see the finer
distinctions in a face. They make poor observers. Any one unacquainted
with birds will show by an attempted description that he has not in the
least seen the bird. I have known old lumbermen who had not noticed the
difference in the needles of the species of pine, nor the leaves of
oaks; but they knew the difference in the quality of the wood well
enough, because that appealed to their interest and held their
attention.

Preparedness adds zest to the walk and enriches it, precisely as a
broad culture and a fund of information enlarge the view of the
traveler. Notwithstanding what may be in the woods, it takes some
understanding and some interest to see it. An unprepared person will
see little; an uninterested person will see nothing. To many of the
villagers the wood-lot is a remote and unfamiliar wilderness, and the
warblers and vireos as unknown as any tropic bird. We should at least
know the kinglets by their caste-mark--whether it be red or yellow--and
the oriole by the colors of his ancient line.

Given a certain preparedness even the rocks become instinct with
suggestion. They are more than stone,--even historical reminders, which
incite one to long and pleasing trains of thought. In the mountains I
came upon a flat ledge of shale which showed ripple marks of an earlier
sea than any we know, a far-off Devonian ocean which once washed this
primitive beach. They had long parted company, and now the beach was
up among the spruce and balsams,--such vicissitudes are there in the
fortunes of all. The ancient waters had left their mark, that however
high the rock might go, it should none the less speak of the mother
sea. Again, the traces of glaciation on ledges and boulders appeal to
the imagination with a peculiar eloquence. What a mighty cosmic plane
was that which smoothed these granite ledges! It planed off New England
as if it were a knot on a plank, and scattered over it the dust and
chips of the workshop. These ledges serve as a fairly accurate compass,
and are at least more reliable than the lichens on the trees.

Some men have an eye for trees and an inborn sympathy with these rooted
giants, as if the same sap ran in their own veins. To them trees have a
personality quite as animals have, and, to be sure, there are
"characters" among trees. I knew a solitary yellow pine which towered
in the landscape, the last of its race. Its vast columnar trunk seemed
to loom and expand as one approached. Always there was distant music in
the boughs above, a noble strain descending from the clouds. Its song
was more majestic than that of any other tree, and fell upon the
listening ear with the far-off cadence of the surf, but sweeter and
more lyrical, as if it might proceed from some celestial harp. Though
there was not a breeze stirring below, this vast tree hummed its mighty
song. Apparently its branches had penetrated to another world than
this, some sphere of unceasing melody.

There is a difference in the voices of trees. Some with difficulty
utter any note, or answer to the storm alone; others only sigh and
shiver. There are days when they gently murmur together, as if a rumor
of general interest had reached them. Again the woods are silent, until
one enters a grove of white pines, when on the instant a sweet low
chant falls on the ear. Come upon the aspen on quiet days and it is all
of a tremor, in a little ecstasy by itself, while the rest are mute.
Trees change their songs with the season. In winter the whistling,
rattling, roaring of hickories and oaks is a veritable witch-song,
beside which the voices of midsummer days are as the cooing of doves.
During a quiet snowfall, the white crystals sifting through the pines
convey the idea of a gentle sociability somewhere in the branches
overhead, the softly whispered and amiable gossip of pine-needles and
snowflakes, old cronies who have not met in the past eight months.

The woods offer unlimited opportunity for making acquaintances, and
nothing else stimulates the interest more than this. The keenest
pleasure is in meeting a new bird: a rare and subtle stimulus not to be
defined, to be experienced only and cherished as a memory. You stand in
the midst of one of the mixed flocks of autumn--winter visitants with a
sprinkling of warblers, and perhaps a blue-headed vireo and a pair of
silent thrushes--and recognize old friends, with a chance of
discovering a stranger. It calls out the zest for the woods like an
appetite for dinner--a finer, more ethereal appetite, which is
satisfied through the eye and ear. Occasionally the blue-headed vireo
may be heard, though the season is far advanced, and the little Parula
warbler indulges in a spiritual and melodious reverie, as if he already
had visions of another spring and was communicating in a state of
trance and ecstasy his prophetic thought.

One supremely mellow day the last of October, there came a pair of
hermits to a secluded spot, flitting into a white oak, where they
remained regarding me with round bright eyes. In due season they
crossed to the pine under which I sat, whereupon one, directly over my
head, began cautiously descending from branch to branch through the
lower dead limbs until he was but a few feet from my face. Here he sat,
regarding me in a gentle friendly way and talking to himself in an
undertone--or was he talking to me? The impelling force continued to
draw my little friend--it was mutual did he but know, a true case of
love at sight--for at last, with an indescribable little flutter, he
dropped from his perch with the evident intent of alighting upon me,
but changed his course directly in my face, and with a swift motion of
the wings darted into the shrubbery. Upon a near view the spell had
broken, and he was again the timid solitary thrush.

It is because the wild life is so shy and elusive that the unexpected
encounters have such charm. They are altogether clandestine and
romantic. You may stroll time and again without the least
encouragement, as though wholly ostracized from this society; and then
some morning you are welcomed on every hand and admitted to the inner
circle of the wood life. About the woods there is ever an enticing
mystery. They invite us to enter as though they concealed some
treasure we sought. A race dwells here apart, and we turn aside for
that silent and refreshing company. When they speak, their speech is
lyrical. There are men who have never known any friendship in Nature;
others again who never outgrow the love of birds and flowers, who
preserve some youthfulness and innocence which keeps them in touch with
wild life. Over and above a healthy curiosity, or any scientific
acquaintance, it is the _companionship_ of the woods and fields which
counts--a real friendship for birds and bees and flowers. Let us
remember the woods in the days of our youth, that we may have this
unfailing resource in later years.




SIGNS OF SPRING


The approach of spring is felt, rather than reasoned about. There is
that in us which rises to greet the incoming tide of the year before
our eyes have apprised us of any change. Winter lies over the world
much as ashes are banked on coals for the night, which nevertheless
retain their heat and will be found alive and glowing in the morning.
In the tropics the fire is not banked and there is no cold dawn with
anticipations of the kindly blaze soon to arise, no gradual uncovering
of the cheerful coals. Here in New England the dawn is rigorous and
spring more welcome. The winter buds are evidence that it is not far
away, and it takes but the least encouragement at any time for this
latent heat and life to awake and show itself in the high blueberry
twigs. Such buoyant faith has the skunk-cabbage it never entirely loses
sight of spring, but exerts some spell over its muddy bed, whereby you
may see that there, at least, it has already come in November.

The reddening of the twigs is in effect a prelude, and precedes the
real spring as dawn precedes daylight, or twilight the night; this is
the dawn of the year and these blueberry twigs its first flush. Smilax
turns suddenly green as the sap circulates in its spiny stems, and the
brown and sear aspect of the earth is relieved and enlivened. This
early green is as refreshing to the eye as the first rhubarb to the
palate.

One of the earliest signs is the little rosette of bright-
leaves on the smaller hair-cap mosses, growing in contact with an
outcropping ledge. You may see whole patches in the pastures, varying
from orange to deep red, a vivid bit of color next the brown earth and
looking like diminutive blossoms. Then come the fruiting spikes of the
common field horsetails, poking out of some sand-bank. These signs of
the awakening season appeal to the trained eye rather than to the
casual glance. Such an one detects the slightest swelling of a
leaf-bud, the faint reddening of a twig, the deeper green of another.
The sap dripping from the freshly cut limb of a birch, or pendent from
the wound in a long glittering icicle, is evidence of the quickened
circulation of the earth. Among the thick mat of dry leaves you may
perhaps find the delicate shoots of wood anemones, and in the swamps
the tightly rolled stipes of the osmunda, like little croziers, while
there is ice yet in the leaves of the pitcher-plant.

Deep lying in all men is a poetic vein which now appears on the
surface. The first pussy-willows and the arrival of bluebirds arouse
sentiments as common to us as the love of music: some suggestion of
renewal, of awakening after the sleep of winter, which touches even the
rough man and makes him kin for a day to the child. We embark each year
on the sea of winter, with unquestioning faith that on its other shore
spring awaits us, once more to shake the violets from her lap. When, in
March, that shore looms in the distance, we feel the joy of travelers
in sight of their native land. There may be rough seas, and March winds
are blustery, but _there_ in sight, nevertheless, is that faint outline
on the horizon.

No blossoming rod of Aaron could appear more miraculous than do the
flowering willows. These twigs of brown and lifeless aspect suddenly
burst into bloom and array themselves in exquisite silvery gray
catkins, while the snow may be still on the ground. Not long after,
the alders in the swamp unfold their clusters of drooping aments which
have been on the tree stiff and rigid throughout the winter. Thousands
of little tails are thus mysteriously hung out on the alder twigs to
sway gently in the breeze, turning from a reddish hue to a
sulphur-yellow as they expand and become powdered with pollen. Born
into a frosty world when the feeble sun is still distant and cold, the
March flowers are a link between winter and spring. But Nature has
certainly relaxed her features; there is just the ghost of a smile on
her icy lips.

This year I heard the bluebird's warble on the 4th of February, but did
not see the bird, and heard no more till early in March, when they came
in flocks. Out of the sky comes to us this liquid note, as if the
heavens had opened and poured upon us their benediction. How sweet it
is to the ear, what music to the heart! And when suddenly a little
flock starts up from the wall or fence, how rich and welcome to the
eye, long denied its modicum of color, is the blue of their backs! We
have had little but artificial tastes and colors and perfumes for so
long that the senses seize with avidity these first offerings--we are
hungry for them.

It changes the whole aspect of things, when on some raw day the first
redwing of the season appears--a vivid bit of color in the bleak swamp,
a hopeful and melodious voice breaking the silence of the year. The
birds are shy and elusive on their arrival and we have every year to
become acquainted again. Even the robins are furtive and silent,
flitting in the sheltered swamps; but the middle of March finds them
calling to each other in their old jocular way. Drawn by the same
subtle influence, the angleworm seems to work toward the surface about
the time the robin is thinking of the lawn, till one day they meet as
by appointment. If the season is late, the worm retires below where it
is less frosty, and the robin takes to the sumac berries, or whatever
else he can find, and defers his spring relish a little longer.

Round about there is an awakening as from an enchanted sleep; the
drowsy world yawns and stretches. The highhole is in evidence, and his
rattling call is calculated to awake the sleepers in that pasture at
least. Soon the chipmunk is on the wall, and the woodchuck warily pokes
his head from his burrow. This note of the highhole is irrepressibly
exuberant and ringing with energy. If it does not prove a tonic to you,
nothing else will. He is even more emphatic in his drumming. His lively
tattoo goes well with his vigorous call. Time to be up and doing! _Wake
up! Wake up! Wake up! Wake up! Wake up!_

Presently the first flock of fox-sparrows drop down from somewhere and
go to scratching among the leaves, like so many chickens. The present
season a flock of perhaps fifty settled in and around a thicket on
March 24th. Their bold clear notes could be heard some distance away,
and drew one in that direction. Numbers of them were hopping about, and
occasionally a bird would rise to a branch overhead and sing, looking
like a hermit-thrush as his back was turned. The place was given over
to the sparrows, and never was thicket more tuneful. There was the
sound of unceasing revelry--a sylvan and melodious revelry.

At this season the impulse to expression is natural and daily becomes
more evident. Even the crow begins to affect music and to show off his
accomplishments. But it is Mlle. Corbeau, and not M. Reynard, that
incites him to this exhibition of vanity. You may hear him in the pine
grove, apparently gargling his throat, which is meant for a gay roulade
to please the ear of some dusky beauty lingering near and perhaps
affecting indifference. This is only a prelude to the astonishing
falsetto that sometimes follows, and which, be it hoped, may prove more
acceptable to Mlle. Corbeau than to our more critical ears. It is very
evident something is going on. The large flocks of winter have given
away to small and excited bands which keep up a perpetual clamor. It is
no surprise, then, some day in March to detect a crow carrying twigs.

At no other time is there such concerted singing among the
song-sparrows as in these first days of the arrival of any considerable
flocks. From bare fields and brown hedgerows arises this simple and
spontaneous expression of joy, a primitive invocation to the goddess
Spring, fresh and clear and innocent as the morning itself. As they hop
about among the dry weeds, one will now and then pick up a straw and
hold it meditatively a moment with some premonition of the nest.
Presently they will be flitting among the still leafless brambles and
briers with an air of secrecy and importance. Some bright morning in
March there comes to the listening ear the song of the purple finch--a
wild sweet strain with the abandon of gipsy music, which thrills with
its very wildness and unrestraint. Anon Phoebe arrives with dry
little voice and familiar swoop after the first incautious fly.

Every season has its characteristic song. More than all others is the
voice of the hyla, essentially springlike and to be associated with no
other time. For several days there has been an occasional desultory
chirp from the woods, when of a sudden, some clear evening, there comes
out of the stillness that wonderfully sweet piping of little frogs.
Fresh and ringing as child voices, it has, at a distance, a certain
rhythm, a soothing cadence, which lulls the ear like the musical patter
of rain-drops in summer showers. Put your ear close to one--if you can
find him--and the sound is deafening, so loud and shrill it pierces to
the very marrow. The small creature sits in some low shrub in the
swamp, grasping a twig on either side as with tiny hands, while it
inflates its air-sac from time to time and sings the love-song of its
race. Heard afar, how soft and pleasing are these answering calls of
the hylas which are the very voice of the evening itself.

About the time the hylas begin to sing in chorus, you may look for the
appearance of the leopard-frog. He is to be heard at midday in his pond
uttering a most deliberate and prolonged snore, evenly and smoothly
drawn out, as if his sleep were dreamless and content. Presently there
is an answering snore, full as deliberate and serene, from across the
pond, followed by long intervals of silence. Very different from this
somnolent song of the leopard-frog is the shrilling of garden-toads.
Not every one would recognize the solemn and dusty toad of the
flower-beds, that flops from under the feet in the dusk, in this
brighter  creature, floating at full length in the shallow
water, his air-sac inflated before him like a parti- bubble. The
shrilling of toads fills the air; they are under a spell, a witchery,
which has set them all to chanting this single strain--high-pitched and
subdued--with a sort of mild frenzy.

April brings the twittering of tree-swallows, and spreads a tinge of
color like a faint