Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, April 1899: Volume LIV, No. 6, April 1899Various
Science
Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, April 1899: Volume LIV, No. 6, April 1899
Various
Science -- Periodicals; Technology -- Periodicals
The first two are transients, flitting through the
underwoods or rustling among fallen leaves in search of their insect
food. To hear the incomparable matins and vespers of the hermit one
must follow to the bird's breeding range on the wooded slopes of the
Appalachians or farther into the deep recesses of the Canadian
forests. The wood thrush breeds with us, and the melody of its notes
adds a peculiar charm to our groves and woodlands that would leave an
unfilled blank in the choir if the bird were a transient like the
hermit or the veery.
From the 1st to the 10th of May a succession of bird waves comes from
the south of such vast proportions as to the number of individuals and
variety of species that all the previous migratory waves seem
insignificant in comparison. It is the flood tide of the migration,
bringing with it the host of warblers, vireos, orioles, tanagers, and
thrushes that suddenly make our woods almost tropical in the variety
of richly colored species and strange bird notes. It would take a
volume to describe the wood warblers, sylvan nymphs of such bizarre
color patterns and dainty forms that one is fain to imagine himself in
the heart of some wondrous forest of a far-away land. Their curious
dry notes, each different in its kind and expression, yet all of the
same insectlike quality; their quick, active motions, now twisting
head downward around the branches, prying into every nook and cranny
in their eager search for food, or fluttering about the clusters of
leaves, add to the strange effect. Their names, too, are richly
stimulative to the color sense--the black-throated green, the
black-throated blue, the chestnut-sided, the bay-breasted, the black
and yellow, the cerulean, the Blackburnian, the blue-winged yellow,
the golden-winged, the blue-yellow-backed or parula warbler, and the
Maryland yellow-throat are each suggestive of a wealth of coloring.
Others have names that carry us to southern realms, like the myrtle
and the palm warblers; and others again tell of curious habits, as the
worm-eating warbler, the hooded fly-catching warbler, and the black
and white creeping warbler that scrambles about the tree trunks like a
true creeper. There is nothing in all the year quite like the May
woods. Then, if never again, you can step from your dooryard into an
enchanted forest. The light yellowish effects of new green in the
feathery masses of the oak catkins and the fresh, unfolding leafage of
the forest trees are a rich feast to the eyes. Against this wealth of
green the dogwood spreads its snow-white masses of bloom. In sunlit
spaces of greenness the scarlet flash of a tanager, the rich blue
coloring of the indigo bird, newly arrived from its winter quarters in
South America, and the glimpse of a rose-breasted grosbeak among the
high tree tops are strangely suggestive of a tropical forest. The ear,
too, is charmed with a multitude of curious notes. The weird cries of
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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