Bradford Torrey

“ While I am admiring him, a blue yellow-back begins to practice his scales—still a little blurred, and needing practice, a critic might say—somewhere at my right among the hillside oaks; another exquisite, a beauty among beauties. I see him, though he is out of sight. And what seems odd, at this very moment his rival as a singer of the scale, the prairie warbler, breaks out on the other side of me. Like the chat and the indigo-bird, he is abundantly at home hereabout.
All this woodland music is set off by spaces of silence, sweeter almost than the music itself. Here is peace unbroken ”

“ Now straight before me, up a woody aisle, an olive-backed thrush stands in full view [21] and a perfect light, facing me and singing, a lovely chorister. Looking at him, I catch a flutter of yellow and black among the leaves by the streamlet; a Kentucky warbler, I suspect, but I dare not go forward to see, for now the thrushes are in chorus again. By and by he comes up from his bath, and falls to dressing his feathers: not a Kentucky, after all, but a Canadian flycatcher, my first one here. He, too, is an exquisite, with fine colors finely laid on, and a most becoming jet necklace. ”

“ Even on one's home beat it quickens the blood; how much more, then, in a new field, where a man is almost a stranger to himself, and rarities and novelties seem but the order of the day. Again and again, morning and afternoon, I traversed the little wood, leaving it between whiles for a rest under the big oaks on the edge of the cliffs, whence, through green vistas, I gazed upon the farms of Lookout Valley and the mountains beyond. ”

“ It is pleasant here, and patience will be rewarded. Yes, there is a magnolia warbler, my second Tennessee specimen; a great beauty, but without that final perfection of good taste (simplicity) which distinguishes the Kentucky. I see him, and he is gone, and I am not to be drawn into a chase. Now I have a glimpse of a thrush; an olive-back, from what I can see, but I cannot be sure. Still I keep my place. A blue-gray gnatcatcher is drawling somewhere in the leafy treetops. Thence, too, a cuckoo fires off a lively fusillade of kuks,—a yellow-bill, by that token. ”

“ Perhaps the most enjoyable part of the day—the most comfortable, certainly, but the words are not synonymous—was a two-hour siesta on the Snodgrass Hill tower, above the tops of the highest trees. The only two landmarks of which I knew the names were Missionary Ridge and Lookout Mountain; the latter running back for many miles into Georgia, like a long wooded plateau, till it rises into High Point at its southern end, and breaks off precipitously. ”

“ Here were Southerners and Northerners fraternally commingled: summer tanagers, Carolina wrens, blue-gray gnatcatchers, cardinal grosbeaks, chats, Bachman finches, field sparrows, chippers, white-throated sparrows, chewinks, indigo buntings, black-poll warblers, myrtle-birds, prairie warblers, a Maryland yellow-throat, a bay-breasted warbler, a black-and-white creeper, a redstart, brown thrushes, catbirds, a single mocking-bird, wood thrushes, red-eyed vireos, white-eyed vireos, wood pewees, a quail, and, in the air, purple martins and turkey buzzards. ”

“ Am I on Missionary Ridge or in the Crawford Notch? I stand motionless, and listen and listen, but my enjoyment is interrupted by a new pleasure. A warbler, evidently a female, from a certain quietness and plainness, and, as I take it, a blue-winged yellow, though I have never seen a female of that species (and only once a male—three days ago at Chickamauga) , comes to the edge of the pool, and in another minute her mate is beside her. Him there is no mistaking. They fly away in a bit of lovers' quarrel, a favorite pastime with mated birds. ”

“ The organ tones of the yellow-throated vireo and the minor whistle of the wood pewee were sweetly in harmony with the spirit of the place, a spirit hard fully and exactly to express, a mingling of regret and exultation. What mattered it that all these men had perished, as it seemed, [100] before their time?—that so many of them were lying in nameless graves? We shall all die; few of us so worthily; and when we are gone, of what use will be a name upon a stone, a name which, after a few years at the most, no passer-by will be concerned to read? Happy is he who dies to some purpose. ”

“ At the foot of the cliffs on which we stand is White House plateau, the battlefield of Lookout Mountain. Chattanooga itself is spread out before us, with Orchard Knob, Cameron Hill, and the national cemetery. Yonder stretches the long line of Missionary Ridge, and farther south, recognizable by at least one of the government towers, is the battlefield of Chickamauga. Here, if anywhere, we may see places that war has made sacred. ”

“ I found one with a song so absurdly peculiar that I spent some time in making sure of its author. It is to be hoped that this tendency to individual variation will persist and increase in the case of this species till something more melodious than its present sibilant monotony is evolved; till beauty and art are mated, as they ought to be. Who would not love to hear the music of all our birds a few millions of years hence? What a singer the hermit thrush will be, for example, when his tune is equal to his voice! Indigo-birds, white-eyed vireos and prairie warblers abounded. ”

“ I had gone to Signal Point not as an ornithologist, but as a patriot and a lover of beauty; but, being there, I added one to my list of Tennessee birds,—a red-tailed hawk, one of the very few hawks seen in all my trip. Sailing below us, it displayed its rusty, diagnostic tail, and put its identity at once beyond question.
Our next start—far too speedy, for the day was short—was for Williams Point; but on our way thither we descended into the valley of Shoal Creek, down which, with the creek to keep it company, runs the old mountain road, now disused and practically impassable. ”

“ And so my eye made the round of the horizon, hill after hill in picturesque confusion, till it returned to Missionary Ridge, with Walden's Ridge rising beyond, and Lookout Point on the left: a charming prospect, especially for its atmosphere and color. The hard woods, with dark pines everywhere among them to set them off, were just coming into leaf, with all those numberless, nameless, delicate shades of green that make the glory of the springtime. ”

“ In them nature has developed the bird idea to its extreme,—a pair of wings, with just body enough for ballast; like a racing-yacht, built for nothing but to carry sail and avoid resistance. Their flight is a good visual music, as Emerson might have said; but I love also their quick, eager notes, like the sounds of children at play. And while it has nothing to do with Tennessee, I am prompted to mention here a bird of this species that I once saw in northern New Hampshire on the 1st of October,—an extraordinarily late date, if my experience counts for anything. ”

“ A scarlet tanager called,—my second one here,—wood thrush voices rang through the mountain side forest, a single thrasher was doing his bravest from the tip of a pine (our "brown mocking-bird" is anything but a skulker when the lyrical mood is on him) , while wood pewees, red-eyed vireos, yellow-throated vireos, black-and-white creepers, and I do not remember what else, joined in the chorus. Just after noon an oven-bird gave out his famous aerial warble. To an aspiring soul even a mountain top is but a perch, a place from which to take wing. ”

“ How amiable a power is contrast—on its softer side! I think of the eager, bloody, sweaty, raging men, who once stormed up these slopes, killing and being killed. The birds know nothing of all that. It might have been thousands of years ago. The very trees have forgotten it. Two or three cows come feeding down the glade, with the lazy tinkle of a bell. And now my new friend, the blue-winged yellow warbler, sings across the path (across the aisle, I was going to say) , but only two or three times, and with only two insignificant lisping syllables. ”

“ Every moment brought some fresh distraction. The long hill—woodland, brambly pasture, and shrubby dooryard—was a nest of singing birds; and when at last I climbed the tower, I came down again almost as suddenly as my Louisiana friends had done. The landscape,—the city and its suburbs, the river, the mountains,—all this would be here to-morrow; just now there were other things to look at. Here in the grass, almost under my nose, were a pair of Bewick wrens, hopping and walking by turns, as song sparrows may sometimes be found doing ”

“ I ran after him, but might as well have remained where I was. "He is a beauty!" I find written in my notebook. And so he is, clothed in lustrous olive and the most gorgeous of yellows with trimmings of black, all in the best of taste, with nothing patchy, nothing fantastic or even fanciful. I was again impressed with the abundance of chats, indigo-birds, and white-eyed vireos. Bachman sparrows were numerous, also, in appropriate localities,—dry and bushy,—and I noted a bluebird, a yellow-throated vireo, and, shouting from a dead treetop, a great crested flycatcher. ”

“ It opens like the song heard in the Florida flat-woods, but is even more varied, both in voice and in musical form. So it seemed to me, I mean to say; but hearing the two a year apart, I cannot speak without reserve. It is pleasanter—as well as safer—to praise both singers than to exalt one to the pulling down of the other. In appearance, Bachman's finch is one of the dullest, dingiest, least prepossessing members of its great family; but its voice and musical genius make it a treasure, especially in this comparatively sparrowless country of eastern Tennessee. ”

“ What a pity!" but not as if he felt in the least distressed about it; a yellow-throated vireo, full-voiced and passionless; a field sparrow, pretty far off; [71] a wood pewee; a yellow-billed cuckoo; a quail; a Carolina wren, with his "Cherry, cherry, cherry!" and a Carolina chickadee,—a modest woodland chorus, interrupted now by the jubilant cackling of a hen at the Snodgrass house (if a man's daily achievements only gave him equal satisfaction!) and now by the scream of a crested flycatcher. ”

“ I sit down upon the leaning, almost horizontal, bole of a large tupelo,—a new tree to me, but common in this country. The thick dark-colored bark is broken deeply into innumerable geometrical figures, giving the tree a noticeable, venerable appearance, as wrinkles lend distinction and character to an old man's face. Another species, which, as far as I can tell, should be our familiar tupelo of Massachusetts, is equally common,—a smaller tree, with larger leaves. ”

“ One of the dearest pleasures of a southern trip in winter or early spring is the very [207] thing at which I have just now hinted, the sight of one's home birds in strange surroundings. You leave New England in early February, for instance, and in two or three days are loitering in the sunny pine-lands about St. Augustine, with the trees full of robins, bluebirds, and pine warblers, and the savanna patches full of meadow larks. Myrtle warblers are everywhere. Phœbes salute you as you walk the city streets, and flocks of chippers and vesper sparrows enliven the fields along the country roads. ”

“ A little jaunt along a foot-path brought me unexpectedly to a second cabin, uninhabited. It was built of boards, not logs, with the usual outside chimney at one end, a broad veranda, a door, and no window; a house to fill a social economist with admiration at the low terms to which civilized life can be reduced. Thoreau himself was outdone, though the veranda, it must be confessed, seemed a dispensable bit of fashionable conformity, with forest trees on all sides crowding the roof. ”

“ Life is easy in the Tennessee mountains. A pile of lumber, newly unloaded near the road,—in the woods, of course,—offered a timely seat, and I took it. Some Chattanooga gentleman was planning a summer cottage for himself, I gathered. May he enjoy it for twenty years as much as I did for twenty minutes. Not far beyond, near a fork in the road, a man of twenty-five or thirty, a youth of sixteen or seventeen, and a small boy were playing marbles in a cabin yard. ”

“ Scattered thinly over the ground are yellow starflowers, the common houstonia, a pink phlox, and some unknown dark yellow blossom a little like the fall dandelion,—Cynthia, I guess.
[24]
My thoughts are recalled by a strong, sharp chip in a voice I do not recognize,—a Kentucky warbler's, as presently turns out. He walks about the ground amid the short, thin grass, seemingly in the most placid of moods; but at every few steps, for some inscrutable reason, he comes out with that quick, peremptory call. And all the while I keep saying to myself, "What a beauty!" But my forenoon is past. ”

“ A jaunt through the woods past the Kelly house, after luncheon, brought me to a superfine, spick-and-span new road,—like the new government "boulevard" on Missionary Ridge, of which it may be a continuation,—following which I came to the Brotherton house, another war-time landmark, [85] weather-beaten and fast going to ruin. In the woods—cleared of underbrush, and with little herbage—were scattered ground flowers: houstonia, yellow and violet oxalis, phlox, cranesbill, bird-foot violets, rue anemones, and spring beauties. ”

“ The thrasher is to a peculiar degree a bird of passion; ecstatic in song, furious in anger, irresistibly pitiful in lamentation. How any man can rob a thrasher's nest with that heartbroken whistle in his ears is more than I can imagine. ”

“ When all is said, the Kentucky, with its beauty and its song, is the star of the family, as far as eastern Tennessee is concerned. I can hear it now, while Falling Water goes babbling past in the shade of laurel and rhododendron. As for the chat, it was omnipresent: in the valley, along the river, on Missionary Ridge, on Lookout Mountain, on Walden's Ridge, in the national cemetery, at Chickamauga,—everywhere, in short, except within the city itself. In this regard it exceeded the white-eyed vireo, and even the indigo-bird, I think. ”