the very edge of day.
On my return, an hour later, the sun was looking over the tops of the "cut-offs," but he did not see a whippoorwill. They were all roosting lengthwise upon the logs and stumps back among the bushes.
These unnatural, unbirdlike habits of the whippoorwill are matched by the appearance of the bird. The first time one sees a whippoorwill he questions whether its shape and color are the result of its nocturnal life or whether it took to the night to hide its unbeautiful self from the gaze of the day.
It has ridiculously short legs, a mere point of a bill, and a bristled, head-dividing gap that would shame a frog. Looked at in the daylight, its color, too, is a meaningless mixture, as unreal and half done as the rest of the creature. But we should not be so hasty in our judgment. There is design in all things in nature; utility is the first law of creation: and the discovery of plan and purpose is the highest appreciation of beauty.
The whippoorwill's dress must be criticized from the view-point of its usefulness to the bird; then it becomes one of the most exquisitely artistic garments worn. Compare it with that of any other bird, and your wonder at it grows. Another such blending of light and shadow cannot be found. The night herself seems to have woven this robe out of warp from the strands of early dawn and of woof spun from the twilight.
The whippoorwill cannot change the color of its dress with the passing clouds, nor match it with the light green of unfolding leaves and the deep bronze of old tree-trunks, as the chameleon can. But the bird has no need of such control. It is always in harmony with its surroundings. In the falling twilight it seems a shadow among the shadows; in the breaking dawn it melts into the gray half-light, a phantom; at midnight it is only an echo in the dark; and at noontime you would pass the creature for a mossy knot, as it squats close to a limb or rail, sitting lengthwise, unlike any bird of the light.
We need not expect a bird of such irregular habits as the whippoorwill to have the normal instincts of birds, even with regard to its offspring. A bird given to roaming about at night, the companion of toads and bats and spooks, is not one that can be trusted to bring up young. You cannot count much on the domesticity of a bird that flits around with the shadows and fills the night with doleful, spellbinding cries.
The nest of the whippoorwill is the bare ground, together with whatever leaves, pebbles, or bits of wood happen to be under the eggs when they are laid. I found a nest once by the side of a log in the woods, and by rarest good fortune missed putting my foot upon the eggs. Here there was no attempt at nest-building, not even a depression in the earth. There were two of the eggs, – the usual number, – long and creamy white, with mingled markings of lavender and reddish brown. Here, upon the log, one of the birds dozed away the day, while the mate on the nest brooded and slept till the gloaming.
The effect of this erratic life in the forest glooms and under the cover of night has been to make the whippoorwill careless of her home and negligent of her young. She has become a creature of omen, weird and wakeful, lingering behind the time of superstition to keep myths moving in our scanty groves and mystery still stirring through the dark rooms of the night.
THE PINE-TREE SWIFT
In any large museum you may see the fossil skeletons, or the casts of the skeletons, of those mammoth saurians of the Mesozoic Age. But you can go into the pine barrens any bright summer day and capture for yourself a real live saurian. The gloom of the pines is the lingering twilight of that far-off time, and the pine-tree lizard, or swift, is the lineal descendant of those reptile monsters who ruled the seas and the dry land before man was.
Throughout southern New Jersey the pine-tree swifts abound. The worm-fences, rail-piles, bridges, stone-heaps, and, above all, the pine-trees are alive with them. They are the true children of the pines, looking so like a very part of the trees that it seems they must have been made by snipping off the pitch-pines' scaly twigs and giving legs to them. They are the aborigines, the primitive people of the barrens; and it is to the lean, sandy barrens you must go if you would see the swifts at home.
In these wide, silent wastes, where there are miles of scrub-pine without a clearing, where the blue, hazy air is laden with the odor of resin, where the soft glooms are mingled with softer, shyer lights, the swifts seem what they actually are – creatures of another, earlier world. When one darts over your foot and scurries up a tree to watch you, it is easy to imagine other antediluvian shapes moving in the deeper shadows beyond. How they rustle the leaves and scratch the rough pine bark! They hurry from under your feet and peek around the tree-trunks into your face, their nails and scales scraping, while they themselves remain almost invisible on the deep browns of the pines; and if you are inclined to be at all nervous, you will start and shiver.
The uncanny name "lizard" is partly accountable for our unpleasant feelings toward this really intelligent and interesting little beast. If he were more widely known as "swift," Sceloporus would be less detested. The z in "lizard" adds a creepy, crawly, sinister something to the name which even the wretched word "snake" does not suggest. "Swift," the common name in some localities, is certainly more pleasing, and, at the same time, quite accurately descriptive.
There is nothing deadly nor vicious, nor yet unlovely, about the swift, unless some may hate his reptile form and his scales. But he is strangely dreaded. The mere mention of him is enough to stampede a Sunday-school picnic. I know good people who kill every swift they meet, under the queer religious delusion that they are lopping off a limb of Satan. "All reptiles are cursed," one such zealot declared to me, "and man is to bruise their heads." The good book of nature was not much read, evidently, by this student of the other Good Book.
The swift is absolutely harmless. He is without fang, sting, or evil charm. He is not exactly orthodox, for he has a third eye in the top of his head, the scientists tell us; but that eye is entirely hidden. It cannot bind nor leer, like Medusa. Otherwise the swift is a perfectly normal little creature, about six inches long from tip to tip, quick of foot, scaly, friendly, wonderfully colored in undulating browns and blues, and looking, on the whole, like a pretty little Noah's-ark alligator.
On the south side of the clump of pines beyond Cubby Hollow is a pile of decaying rails where I have watched the swifts, and they me, for so many seasons that I fancy they know me. Dewberry-vines and Virginia creeper clamber over the pile, and at one end, flaming all through July, burns a splendid bush of butterfly-weed. The orange-red blossoms shine like a beacon against the dark of the pines, and lure a constant stream of insect visitors, who make living for the swifts of this particular place rich and easy while the attraction lasts.
Any hot day I can find several swifts here, and they are so tame that I can tickle them all off to sleep without the slightest trouble. They will look up quickly as I approach, fearless but alert, with head tilted and eyes snapping; but not one stirs. With a long spear of Indian grass I reach out gently and stroke the nearest one. Shut go his eyes; down drops his head; he sleeps – at least, he pretends to. This is my peace greeting. Now I may sit down, and life upon the rail-pile will go normally on.
Upon the end of a rail, so close to a cluster of the butterfly-weed blossoms that he can pick the honey-gatherers from it, – as you would pick olives from a dish on the table, – lies a big male swift without a tail. He lost that member in an encounter with me several weeks ago. A new one has started, but it is a mere bud yet. I know his sex by the brilliant blue stripe down each side, which is a favor not granted the females. The sun is high and hot. "Fearfully, hot," I say under my wide straw hat. "Delightfully warm," says the lizard, sprawling over the rail, his legs hanging, eyes half shut, every possible scale exposed to the blistering rays, and his bud of a tail twitching with the small spasms of exquisite comfort that shoot to the very ends of his being.
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