A world of green hills : $b Observations of nature and human nature in the Blue RidgeTorrey, Bradford
History
A world of green hills : $b Observations of nature and human nature in the Blue Ridge
Torrey, Bradford
Bird watching; Blue Ridge Mountains -- Description and travel; Natural history -- Outdoor books
This was on the 28th of April. Two days later I noticed one or two
more,--probably two, but there was no certainty that I had not run
upon the same bird twice; and on the morning of May 1, in a last
hurried visit to the woods, I saw two together. All were males in full
plumage, and one of the last two was singing. The warbler migration
was just coming on, and I could not help believing that with a little
time blue golden-wings would grow to be fairly numerous. That, of
course, was matter of conjecture. I found no sign of the species at
Natural Bridge, which is about a hundred miles from Pulaski in a
northeasterly direction. In Massachusetts this beautiful warbler’s
distribution is decidedly local, and its commonness is believed to have
increased greatly in the last twenty years. Possibly the same may be
true in Virginia. Possibly, too, my seeing of five or six specimens,
on opposite sides of the city, was nothing but a happy chance, and my
inference from it a pure delusion.
I have implied that the warbler migration was approaching its height
on the 1st of May. In point of fact, however, the brevity of my
visit--and perhaps also its date, neither quite early enough nor quite
late enough--rendered it impossible for me to gather much as to the
course of this always interesting movement, or even to understand the
significance of the little of it that came under my eye. My first
day’s walks--very short and altogether at haphazard, and that of the
afternoon as good as thrown away--showed but three species of warblers;
an anomalous state of things, especially as two of the birds were the
oven-bird and the golden warbler, neither of them to be reckoned among
the early comers of the family. The next day I saw six other species,
including such prompt ones as the pine-creeper and the myrtle-bird, and
such a comparatively tardy one as the Blackburnian. On the 26th three
additional names were listed,--the blue yellow-back, the chestnut-side,
and the worm-eater. Not until the fourth day was anything seen or heard
of the black-throated green. This fact of itself would establish the
worthlessness of any conclusions that might be drawn from the progress
of events as I had noted them.
On the 28th, when my first blue golden-wings made their appearance,
there were present also in the same place three palm warblers,--my
only meeting with them in Virginia, where Dr. Rives marks them “not
common.” With them, or in the same small wood, were a group of silent
red-eyed vireos, several yellow-throated vireos, also silent,
myrtle-birds, one or two Blackburnians, one or two chestnut-sides, two
or three redstarts, and one oven-bird, with black-and-white creepers,
and something like a flock (a rare sight for me) of white-breasted
nuthatches,--a typical body of migrants, to which may be added, though
less clearly members of the same party, tufted titmice, Carolina
chickadees, white-throated sparrows, Carolina doves, flickers, downy
woodpeckers, and brown thrashers.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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