Birds -- Tennessee; Natural history -- Outdoor books; Tennessee -- Description and travel
Indigo-birds are here, of course. Their number is one of the marvels
of this country,--though indeed the country seems made for them, as
it is also for chats and white-eyed vireos. A bit farther down the
valley, as I come to the maples and tupelos, with their grateful
density of shade, a wood pewee sings, and then a wood thrush. At the
same moment, an Acadian flycatcher, who is always here (his nest
is building overhead, as, after a while, I discover), salutes me
with a quick, spiteful note. "No trespassing," he says. Landowners
are pretty much alike. I pass on, but not far, and beside a little
thicket I take up my stand, and wait. 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. Next a black-poll warbler shows himself, still far
from home, though he has already traveled a long way northward;
and then, in one of the basins of the stream (if we may call it a
stream, in which there is no semblance of a current), a chat comes
to wash himself. Now I see the thrush again; or rather, I hear him
whistle, and by moving a step or two I get him with my eye. He _is_
an olive-back, as his whistle of itself would prove; and presently
he begins to sing, to my intense delight. Soon two others are in
voice with him. 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. And look! there is a scarlet tanager; the
same gorgeous fellow, I suppose, that was here two days ago, and the
only one I have seen in this lower country. What a beauty he is! One
of the finest; handsomer, so I think, than the handsomest of his
all-red cousins. Now he calls _chip-cherr_, and now he breaks into
song. There he falls behind; his cousin's voice is less hoarse, and
his style less labored and jerky.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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