Theodore Roosevelt: An Autobiography
I regularly rounded up a big band of them, so that John Burroughs could
look at them. I do not think, however, that he cared to see them as much
as I did. The birds interested him more, especially a tiny owl the size
of a robin which we saw perched on the top of a tree in mid-afternoon
entirely uninfluenced by the sun and making a queer noise like a cork
being pulled from a bottle. I was rather ashamed to find how much
better his eyes were than mine in seeing the birds and grasping their
differences.
When wolf-hunting in Texas, and when bear-hunting in Louisiana and
Mississippi, I was not only enthralled by the sport, but also by the
strange new birds and other creatures, and the trees and flowers I had
not known before. By the way, there was one feast at the White House
which stands above all others in my memory--even above the time when
I lured Joel Chandler Harris thither for a night, a deed in which to
triumph, as all who knew that inveterately shy recluse will testify.
This was "the bear-hunters' dinner." I had been treated so kindly by my
friends on these hunts, and they were such fine fellows, men whom I was
so proud to think of as Americans, that I set my heart on having them
at a hunters' dinner at the White House. One December I succeeded; there
were twenty or thirty of them, all told, as good hunters, as daring
riders, as first-class citizens as could be found anywhere; no finer set
of guests ever sat at meat in the White House; and among other game
on the table was a black bear, itself contributed by one of these same
guests.
When I first visited California, it was my good fortune to see the "big
trees," the Sequoias, and then to travel down into the Yosemite, with
John Muir. Of course of all people in the world he was the one with whom
it was best worth while thus to see the Yosemite. He told me that when
Emerson came to California he tried to get him to come out and camp with
him, for that was the only way in which to see at their best the majesty
and charm of the Sierras. But at the time Emerson was getting old and
could not go. John Muir met me with a couple of packers and two mules
to carry our tent, bedding, and food for a three days' trip. The first
night was clear, and we lay down in the darkening aisles of the great
Sequoia grove. The majestic trunks, beautiful in color and in symmetry,
rose round us like the pillars of a mightier cathedral than ever was
conceived even by the fervor of the Middle Ages. Hermit thrushes sang
beautifully in the evening, and again, with a burst of wonderful music,
at dawn. I was interested and a little surprised to find that, unlike
John Burroughs, John Muir cared little for birds or bird songs, and knew
little about them. The hermit-thrushes meant nothing to him, the trees
and the flowers and the cliffs everything. The only birds he noticed
or cared for were some that were very conspicuous, such as the
water-ousels--always particular favorites of mine too. The second night
we camped in a snow-storm, on the edge of the canyon walls, under the
spreading limbs of a grove of mighty silver fir; and next day we went
down into the wonderland of the valley itself. I shall always be glad
that I was in the Yosemite with John Muir and in the Yellowstone with
John Burroughs.
Like most Americans interested in birds and books, I know a good
deal about English birds as they appear in books. I know the lark of
Shakespeare and Shelley and the Ettrick Shepherd; I know the nightingale
of Milton and Keats; I know Wordsworth's cuckoo; I know mavis and merle
singing in the merry green wood of the old ballads; I know Jenny Wren
and Cock Robin of the nursery books. Therefore I had always much desired
to hear the birds in real life; and the opportunity offered in June,
1910, when I spent two or three weeks in England. As I could snatch but
a few hours from a very exciting round of pleasures and duties, it was
necessary for me to be with some companion who could identify both song
and singer. In Sir Edward Grey, a keen lover of outdoor life in all
its phases, and a delightful companion, who knows the songs and ways of
English birds as very few do know them, I found the best possible guide.
We left London on the morning of June 9, twenty-four hours before I
sailed from Southampton. Getting off the train at Basingstoke, we drove
to the pretty, smiling valley of the Itchen. Here we tramped for three
or four hours, then again drove, this time to the edge of the New
Forest, where we first took tea at an inn, and then tramped through the
forest to an inn on its other side, at Brockenhurst. At the conclusion
of our walk my companion made a list of the birds we had seen, putting
an asterisk (*) opposite those which we had heard sing. There were
forty-one of the former and twenty-three of the latter, as follows:
* Thrush, * blackbird, * lark, * yellowhammer, * robin,
*wren, * golden-crested wren, * goldfinch, * chaffinch, *
*greenfinch, pied wagtail, sparrow, * dunnock (hedge,
accentor), missel thrush, starling, rook, jackdaw,
*blackcap, * garden warbler, * willow warbler, * chiffchaff,
* wood warbler, tree-creeper, * reed bunting, * sedge
warbler, coot, water hen, little grebe (dabchick), tufted
duck, wood pigeon, stock dove, * turtle dove, peewit, tit (?
coal-tit), * cuckoo, * nightjar, * swallow, martin, swift,
pheasant, partridge.
The valley of the Itchen is typically the England that we know from
novel and story and essay. It is very beautiful in every way, with a
rich, civilized, fertile beauty--the rapid brook twisting among its reed
beds, the rich green of trees and grass, the stately woods, the gardens
and fields, the exceedingly picturesque cottages, the great handsome
houses standing in their parks. Birds were plentiful; I know but few
places in America where one would see such an abundance of individuals,
and I was struck by seeing such large birds as coots, water hens,
grebes, tufted ducks, pigeons, and peewits. In places in America as
thickly settled as the valley of the Itchen, I should not expect to see
any like number of birds of this size; but I hope that the efforts of
the Audubon societies and kindred organizations will gradually make
themselves felt until it becomes a point of honor not only with the
American man, but with the American small boy, to shield and protect all
forms of harmless wild life. True sportsmen should take the lead in such
a movement, for if there is to be any shooting there must be something
to shoot; the prime necessity is to keep, and not kill out, even the
birds which in legitimate numbers may be shot.
The New Forest is a wild, uninhabited stretch of heath and woodland,
many of the trees gnarled and aged, and its very wildness, the lack of
cultivation, the ruggedness, made it strongly attractive in my eyes, and
suggested my own country. The birds of course were much less plentiful
than beside the Itchen.
The bird that most impressed me on my walk was the blackbird. I had
already heard nightingales in abundance near Lake Como, and had also
listened to larks, but I had never heard either the blackbird, the song
thrush, or the blackcap warbler; and while I knew that all three were
good singers, I did not know what really beautiful singers they were.
Blackbirds were very abundant, and they played a prominent part in the
chorus which we heard throughout the day on every hand, though perhaps
loudest the following morning at dawn. In its habits and manners the
blackbird strikingly resembles our American robin, and indeed looks
exactly like a robin, with a yellow bill and coal-black plumage. It
hops everywhere over the lawns, just as our robin does, and it lives
and nests in the gardens in the same fashion. Its song has a general
resemblance to that of our robin, but many of the notes are far
more musical, more like those of our wood thrush. Indeed, there were
individuals among those we heard certain of whose notes seemed to me
almost to equal in point of melody the chimes of the wood thrush; and
the highest possible praise for any song-bird is to liken its song to
that of the wood thrush or hermit thrush. I certainly do not think that
the blackbird has received full justice in the books. I knew that he was
a singer, but I really had no idea how fine a singer he was. I suppose
one of his troubles has been his name, just as with our own catbird.
When he appears in the ballads as the merle, bracketed with his cousin
the mavis, the song thrush, it is far easier to recognize him as the
master singer that he is. It is a fine thing for England to have such
an asset of the countryside, a bird so common, so much in evidence, so
fearless, and such a really beautiful singer.
The thrush is a fine singer too, a better singer than our American
robin, but to my mind not at the best quite as good as the blackbird at
his best; although often I found difficulty in telling the song of one
from the song of the other, especially if I only heard two or three
notes.
The larks were, of course, exceedingly attractive. It was fascinating
to see them spring from the grass, circle upwards, steadily singing and
soaring for several minutes, and then return to the point whence
they had started. As my companion pointed out, they exactly fulfilled
Wordsworth's description; they soared but did not roam. It is quite
impossible wholly to differentiate a bird's voice from its habits and
surroundings. Although in the lark's song there are occasional musical
notes, the song as a whole is not very musical; but it is so joyous,
buoyant and unbroken, and uttered under such conditions as fully to
entitle the bird to the place he occupies with both poet and prose
writer.
The most musical singer we heard was the blackcap warbler. To my ear
its song seemed more musical than that of the nightingale. It was
astonishingly powerful for so small a bird; in volume and continuity
it does not come up to the songs of the thrushes and of certain other
birds, but in quality, as an isolated bit of melody, it can hardly be
surpassed.
Among the minor singers the robin was noticeable. We all know this
pretty little bird from the books, and I was prepared to find him as
friendly and attractive as he proved to be, but I had not realized how
well he sang. It is not a loud song, but very musical and attractive,
and the bird is said to sing practically all through the year. The song
of the wren interested me much, because it was not in the least like
that of our house wren, but, on the contrary, like that of our winter
wren. The theme is the same as the winter wren's, but the song did not
seem to me to be as brilliantly musical as that of the tiny singer of
the North Woods. The sedge warbler sang in the thick reeds a mocking
ventriloquial lay, which reminded me at times of the less pronounced
parts of our yellow-breasted chat's song. The cuckoo's cry was
singularly attractive and musical, far more so than the rolling, many
times repeated, note of our rain-crow.
We did not reach the inn at Brockenhurst until about nine o'clock, just
at nightfall, and a few minutes before that we heard a nightjar. It did
not sound in the least like either our whip-poor-will or our night-hawk,
uttering a long-continued call of one or two syllables, repeated over
and over. The chaffinch was very much in evidence, continually chaunting
its unimportant little ditty. I was pleased to see the bold, masterful
missel thrush, the stormcock as it is often called; but this bird breeds
and sings in the early spring, when the weather is still tempestuous,
and had long been silent when we saw it. The starlings, rooks, and
jackdaws did not sing, and their calls were attractive merely as the
calls of our grackles are attractive; and the other birds that we