Secret of the Woods
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William J. Long >> Secret of the Woods
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Suddenly there is a rustle in the leaves. Something stirs by the
old stump. A moment ago you thought it was only a brown root; now
it runs, hides, draws itself erect--Kwit, kwit, kwit! and with a
whirring rush of wings and a whirling eddy of dead leaves a
grouse bursts up, and darts away like a blunt arrow,
flint-tipped, gray-feathered, among the startled birch stems. As
you follow softly to rout him out again, and to thrill and be
startled by his unexpected rush, something of the Indian has come
unbidden into your cautious tread. All regret for the wilderness
is vanished; you are simply glad that so much wildness still
remains to speak eloquently of the good old days.
It is this element of unconquerable wildness in the grouse,
coupled with a host of early, half-fearful impressions, that
always sets my heart to beating, as to an old tune, whenever a
partridge bursts away at my feet. I remember well a little child
that used to steal away into the still woods, which drew him by
an irresistible attraction while as yet their dim arches and
quiet paths were full of mysteries and haunting terrors. Step by
step the child would advance into the shadows, cautious as a wood
mouse, timid as a rabbit. Suddenly a swift rustle and a
thunderous rush of something from the ground that first set the
child's heart to beating wildly, and then reached his heels in a
fearful impulse which sent him rushing out of the woods, tumbling
headlong over the old gray wall, and scampering halfway across
the pasture before he dared halt from the terror behind. And
then, at last, another impulse which always sent the child
stealing back into the woods again, shy, alert, tense as a
watching fox, to find out what the fearful thing was that could
make such a commotion in the quiet woods.
And when he found out at last--ah, that was a discovery beside
which the panther's kittens are as nothing as I think of them.
One day in the woods, near the spot where the awful thunder used
to burst away, the child heard a cluck and a kwitkwit, and saw a
beautiful bird dodging, gliding, halting, hiding in the
underbrush, watching the child's every motion. And when he ran
forward to put his cap over the bird, it burst away, and
then--whirr! whirr! whirr! a whole covey of grouse roared up all
about him. The terror of it weakened his legs so that he fell
down in the eddying leaves and covered his ears. But this time he
knew what it was at last, and in a moment he was up and running,
not away, but fast as his little legs could carry him after the
last bird that he saw hurtling away among the trees, with a birch
branch that he had touched with his wings nodding good-by behind
him.
There is another association with this same bird that always
gives an added thrill to the rush of his wings through the
startled woods. It was in the old school by the cross-roads, one
sleepy September afternoon. A class in spelling, big boys and
little girls, toed a crack in front of the waster's desk. The
rest of the school droned away on appointed tasks in the drowsy
interlude. The fat boy slept openly on his arms; even the
mischief-maker was quiet, thinking dreamily of summer days that
were gone. Suddenly there was a terrific crash, a clattering
tinkle of broken glass, a howl from a boy near the window. Twenty
knees banged the desks beneath as twenty boys jumped. Then,
before any of us had found his wits, Jimmy Jenkins, a red-headed
boy whom no calamity could throw off his balance and from whom no
opportunity ever got away free, had jumped over two forms
and was down on the floor in the girls' aisle, gripping something
between his knees--
"I've got him," he announced, with the air of a general.
"Got what?" thundered the master.
"Got a pa'tridge; he's an old buster," said Jimmy. And he
straightened up, holding by the legs a fine cock partridge whose
stiffening wings still beat his sides spasmodically. He had been
scared-up in the neighboring woods, frightened by some hunter out
of his native coverts. When he reached the unknown open places he
was more frightened still and, as a frightened grouse always
flies straight, he had driven like a bolt through the schoolhouse
window, killing himself by the impact.
Rule-of-three and cube root and the unmapped wilderness of
partial payments have left but scant impression on one of those
pupils, at least; but a bird that could wake up a drowsy
schoolroom and bring out a living lesson, full of life and
interest and the subtile call of the woods, from a drowsy teacher
who studied law by night, but never his boys by day,--that was a
bird to be respected. I have studied him with keener interest
ever since.
Yet however much you study the grouse, you learn little except
how wild he is. Occasionally, when you are still in the woods and
a grouse walks up to your hiding place, you get a fair glimpse
and an idea or two; but he soon discovers you, and draws himself
up straight as a string and watches you for five minutes without
stirring or even winking. Then, outdone at his own game, he
glides away. A rustle of little feet on leaves, a faint kwit-kwit
with a question in it, and he is gone. Nor will he come back,
like the fox, to watch from the other side and find out what you
are.
Civilization, in its first advances, is good to the grouse,
providing him with an abundance of food and driving away his
enemies. Grouse are always more numerous about settlements than
in the wilderness. Unlike other birds, however, he grows wilder
and wilder by nearness to men's dwellings. I suppose that is
because the presence of man is so often accompanied by the rush
of a dog and the report of a gun, and perhaps by the rip and
sting of shot in his feathers as he darts away. Once, in the
wilderness, when very hungry, I caught two partridges by slipping
over their heads a string noose at the end of a pole. Here one
might as well try to catch a bat in the twilight as to hope to
snare one of our upland partridges by any such invention, or even
to get near enough to meditate the attempt.
But there was one grouse--and he the very wildest of all that I
have ever met in the woods--who showed me unwittingly many bits
of his life, and with whom I grew to be very well acquainted
after a few seasons' watching. All the hunters of the village
knew him well; and a half-dozen boys, who owned guns and were
eager to join the hunters' ranks, had a shooting acquaintance
with him. He was known far and wide as "the ol' beech pa'tridge."
That he was old no one could deny who knew his ways and his
devices; and he was frequently scared-up in a beech wood by a
brook, a couple of miles out of the village.
Spite of much learned discussion as to different varieties of
grouse, due to marked variations in coloring, I think personally
that we have but one variety, and that differences in color are
due largely to the different surroundings in which they live. Of
all birds the grouse is most invisible when quiet, his coloring
blends so perfectly with the roots and leaves and tree stems
among which he hides. This wonderful invisibility is increased by
the fact that he changes color easily. He is darker in summer,
lighter in winter, like the rabbit. When he lives in dark woods
he becomes a glossy red-brown; and when his haunt is among the
birches he is often a decided gray.
This was certainly true of the old beech partridge. When he
spread his tail wide and darted away among the beeches, his color
blended so perfectly with the gray tree trunks that only a keen
eye could separate him. And he knew every art of the dodger
perfectly. When he rose there was scarcely a second of time
before he had put a big tree between you and him, so as to cover
his line of flight. I don't know how many times he had been shot
at on the wing. Every hunter I knew had tried it many times; and
every boy who roamed the woods in autumn had sought to pot him on
the ground. But he never lost a feather; and he would never stand
to a dog long enough for the most cunning of our craft to take
his position.
When a brood of young partridges hear a dog running in the woods,
they generally flit to the lower branches of a tree and kwit-kwit
at him curiously. They have not yet learned the difference
between him and the fox, who is the ancient enemy of their kind,
and whom their ancestors of the wilderness escaped and tantalized
in the same way. But when it is an old bird that your setter is
trailing, his actions are a curious mixture of cunning and
fascination. As old Don draws to a point, the grouse pulls
himself up rigidly by a stump and watches the dog. So both stand
like statues; the dog held by the strange instinct which makes
him point, lost to sight, sound and all things else save the
smell in his nose, the grouse tense as a fiddlestring, every
sense alert, watching the enemy whom he thinks to be fooled by
his good hiding. For a few moments they are motionless; then the
grouse skulks and glides to a better cover. As the strong scent
fades from Don's nose, he breaks his point and follows. The
grouse hears him and again hides by drawing himself up against a
stump, where he is invisible; again Don stiffens into his point,
one foot lifted, nose and tail in a straight line, as if he were
frozen and could not move.
So it goes on, now gliding through the coverts, now still as a
stone, till the grouse discovers that so long as he is still the
dog seems paralyzed, unable to move or feel. Then he draws
himself up, braced against a root or a tree boll; and there they
stand, within twenty feet of each other, never stirring, never
winking, till the dog falls from exhaustion at the strain, or
breaks it by leaping forward, or till the hunter's step on the
leaves fills the grouse with a new terror that sends him rushing
away through the October woods to deeper solitudes.
Once, at noon, I saw Old Ben, a famous dog, draw to a perfect
point. Just ahead, in a tangle of brown brakes, I could see the
head and neck of a grouse watching the dog keenly. Old Ben's
master, to test the splendid training of his dog, proposed lunch
on the spot. We withdrew a little space and ate deliberately,
watching the bird and the dog with an interest that grew keener
and keener as the meal progressed, while Old Ben stood like a
rock, and the grouse's eye shone steadily out of the tangle of
brakes. Nor did either move so much as an eyelid while we ate,
and Ben's master smoked his pipe with quiet confidence. At last,
after a full hour, he whacked his pipe on his boot heel and rose
to reach for his gun. That meant death for the grouse; but I owed
him too much of keen enjoyment to see him cut down in swift
flight. In the moment that the master's back was turned I hurled
a knot at the tangle of brakes. The grouse burst away, and Old
Ben, shaken out of his trance by the whirr of wings, dropped
obediently to the charge and turned his head to say reproachfully
with his eyes: "What in the world is the matter with you back
there--didn't I hold him long enough?"
The noble old fellow was trembling like a leaf after the long
strain when I went up to him to pat his head and praise his
steadiness, and share with him the better half of my lunch. But
to this day Ben's master does not know what started the grouse so
suddenly; and as he tells you about the incident will still say
regretfully: "I ought to a-started jest a minute sooner, 'fore he
got tired. Then I'd a had 'im."
The old beech partridge, however, was a bird of a different mind.
No dog ever stood him for more than a second; he had learned too
well what the thing meant. The moment he heard the patter of a
dog's feet on leaves he would run rapidly, and skulk and hide and
run again, keeping dog and hunter on the move till he found the
cover he wanted,--thick trees, or a tangle of wild
grapevines,--when he would burst out on, the farther side. And no
eye, however keen, could catch more than a glimpse of a gray tail
before he was gone. Other grouse make short straight flights, and
can be followed and found again; but he always drove away on
strong wings for an incredible distance, and swerved far to right
or left; so that it was a waste of time to follow him up. Before
you found him he had rested his wings and was ready for another
flight; and when you did find him he would shoot away like an
arrow out of the top of a pine tree and give you never a glimpse
of himself.
He lived most of the time on a ridge behind the 'Fales place,' an
abandoned farm on the east of the old post road. This was his
middle range, a place of dense coverts, bullbrier thickets and
sunny open spots among the ledges, where you might, with
good-luck, find him on special days at any season. But he had
all the migratory instincts of a Newfoundland caribou. In winter
he moved south, with twenty other grouse, to the foot of the
ridge, which dropped away into a succession of knolls and ravines
and sunny, well-protected little valleys, where food was plenty.
Here, fifty years ago, was the farm pasture; but now it had grown
up everywhere with thickets and berry patches, and wild apple
trees of the birds' planting. All the birds loved it in their
season; quail nested on its edges; and you could kick a brown
rabbit out of almost any of its decaying brush piles or hollow
moss-grown logs.
In the spring he crossed the ridge northward again, moving into
the still dark woods, where he had two or three wives with as
many broods of young partridges; all of whom, by the way, he
regarded with astonishing indifference.
Across the whole range--stealing silently out of the big woods,
brawling along the foot of the ridge and singing through the old
pasture--ran a brook that the old beech partridge seemed to love.
A hundred times I started him from its banks. You had only to
follow it any November morning before eight o'clock, and you
would be sure to find him. But why he haunted it at this
particular time and season I never found out.
I used to wonder sometimes why I never saw him drink. Other birds
had their regular drinking places and bathing pools there, and I
frequently watched them from my hiding; but though I saw him
many times, after I learned his haunts, he never touched the
water.
One early summer morning a possible explanation suggested itself.
I was sitting quietly by the brook, on the edge of the big woods,
waiting for a pool to grow quiet, out of which I had just taken a
trout and in which I suspected there was a larger one hiding. As
I waited a mother-grouse and her brood--one of the old beech
partridge's numerous families for whom he provided nothing--came
gliding along the edge of the woods. They had come to drink,
evidently, but not from the brook. A sweeter draught than that
was waiting for their coming. The dew was still clinging to the
grass blades; here and there a drop hung from a leaf point,
flashing like a diamond in the early light. And the little
partridges, cheeping, gliding, whistling among the drooping
stems, would raise their little bills for each shining dewdrop
that attracted them, and drink it down and run with glad little
pipings and gurglings to the next drop that flashed an invitation
from its bending grass blade. The old mother walked sedately in
the midst of them, now fussing over a laggard, now clucking them
all together in an eager, chirping, jumping little crowd, each
one struggling to be first in at the death of a fat slug she had
discovered on the underside of a leaf; and anon reaching herself
for a dewdrop that hung too high for their drinking. So they
passed by within a few yards, a shy, wild, happy little family,
and disappeared into the shadow of the big woods.
Perhaps that is why I never saw the old beech partridge drink
from the brook. Nature has a fresher draught, of her own
distilling, that is more to his tasting.
Earlier in the season I found another of his families near the
same spot. I was stealing along a wood road when I ran plump upon
them, scratching away at an ant hill in a sunny open spot. There
was a wild flurry, as if a whirlwind had struck the ant hill; but
it was only the wind of the mother bird's wings, whirling up the
dust to blind my eyes and to hide the scampering retreat of her
downy brood. Again her wings beat the ground, sending up a flurry
of dead leaves, in the midst of which the little partridges
jumped and scurried away, so much like the leaves that no eye
could separate them. Then the leaves settled slowly and the brood
was gone, as if the ground had swallowed them up; while Mother
Grouse went fluttering along just out of my reach, trailing a
wing as if broken, falling prone on the ground, clucking and
kwitting and whirling the leaves to draw my attention and bring
me away from where the little ones were hiding.
I knelt down just within the edge of woods, whither I had seen
the last laggard of the brood vanish like a brown streak, and
began to look for them carefully. After a time I found one. He
was crouched flat on a dead oak leaf, just under my nose, his
color hiding him wonderfully. Something glistened in a tangle of
dark roots. It was an eye, and presently I could make out a
little head there. That was all I could find of the family,
though a dozen more were close beside me, under the leaves
mostly. As I backed away I put my hand on another before seeing
him, and barely saved myself from hurting the little sly-boots,
who never stirred a muscle, not even when I took away the leaf
that covered him and put it back again softly.
Across the pathway was a thick scrub oak, under which I sat down
to watch. Ten long minutes passed, with nothing stirring, before
Mother Grouse came stealing back. She clucked once--"Careful!" it
seemed to say; and not a leaf stirred. She clucked again--did the
ground open? There they were, a dozen or more of them, springing
up from nowhere and scurrying with a thousand cheepings to tell
her all about it. So she gathered them all close about her, and
they vanished into the friendly shadows.
It was curious how jealously the old beech partridge watched over
the solitudes where these interesting little families roamed.
Though he seemed to care nothing about them, and was never seen
near one of his families, he suffered no other cock partridge to
come into his woods, or even to drum within hearing. In the
winter he shared the southern pasture peaceably with twenty other
grouse; and on certain days you might, by much creeping, surprise
a whole company of them on a sunny southern slope, strutting and
gliding, in and out and round about, with spread tails and
drooping wings, going through all the movements of a grouse
minuet. Once, in Indian summer, I crept up to twelve or fifteen
of the splendid birds, who were going through their curious
performance in a little opening among the berry bushes; and in
the midst of them-more vain, more resplendent, strutting more
proudly and clucking more arrogantly than any other--was the old
beech partridge.
But when the spring came, and the long rolling drum-calls began
to throb through the budding woods, he retired to his middle
range on the ridge, and marched from one end to the other,
driving every other cock grouse out of hearing, and drubbing him
soundly if he dared resist. Then, after a triumph, you would hear
his loud drum-call rolling through the May splendor, calling as
many wives as possible to share his rich living.
He had two drumming logs on this range, as I soon discovered; and
once, while he was drumming on one log, I hid near the other and
imitated his call fairly well by beating my hands on a blown
bladder that I had buttoned under my jacket. The roll of a grouse
drum is a curiously muffled sound; it is often hard to determine
the spot or even the direction whence it comes; and it always
sounds much farther away than it really is. This may have
deceived the old beech partridge at first into thinking that he
heard some other bird far away, on a ridge across the valley
where he had no concern; for presently he drummed again on his
own log. I answered it promptly, rolling back a defiance, and
also telling any hen grouse on the range that here was another
candidate willing to strut and spread his tail and lift the
resplendent ruff about his neck to win his way into her good
graces, if she would but come to his drumming log and see him.
Some suspicion that a rival had come to his range must have
entered the old beech partridge's head, for there was a long
silence in which I could fancy him standing up straight and stiff
on his drumming log, listening intently to locate the daring
intruder, and holding down his bubbling wrath with difficulty.
Without waiting for him to drum again, I beat out a challenge.
The roll had barely ceased when he came darting up the ridge,
glancing like a bolt among the thick branches, and plunged down
by his own log, where he drew himself up with marvelous
suddenness to listen and watch for the intruder.
He seemed relieved that the log was not occupied, but he was
still full of wrath and suspicion. He glided and dodged all about
the place, looking and listening; then he sprang to his log and,
without waiting to strut and spread his gorgeous feathers as
usual, he rolled out the long call, drawing himself up straight
the instant it was done, turning his head from side to side to
catch the first beat of his rival's answer--"Come out, if you
dare; drum, if you dare. Oh, you coward!" And he hopped, five or
six high, excited hops, like a rooster before a storm, to the
other end of the log, and again his quick throbbing drumcall
rolled through the woods.
Though I was near enough to see him clearly without, my field
glasses, I could not even then, nor at any other time when I have
watched grouse drumming, determine just how the call is given.
After a little while the excitement of a suspected rival's
presence wore away, and he grew exultant, thinking that he had
driven the rascal out of his woods. He strutted back and forth on
the log, trailing his wings, spreading wide his beautiful tail,
lifting his crest and his resplendent ruff. Suddenly he would
draw himself up; there would be a flash of his wings up and down
that no eye could follow, and I would hear a single throb of his
drum. Another flash and another throb; then faster and faster,
till he seemed to have two or three pairs of wings, whirring and
running together like the spokes of a swift-moving wheel, and the
drumbeats rolled together into a long call and died away in the
woods.
Generally he stood up on his toes, as a rooster does when he
flaps his wings before crowing; rarely he crouched down close to
the log; but I doubt if he beat the wood with his wings, as is
often claimed. Yet the two logs were different; one was dry and
hard, the other mouldy and moss-grown; and the drumcalls were as
different as the two logs. After a time I could tell by the sound
which log he was using at the first beat of his wings; but that,
I think, was a matter of resonance, a kind of sounding-board
effect, and not because the two sounded differently as he beat
them. The call is undoubtedly made either by striking the wings
together over his back or, as I am inclined to believe, by
striking them on the down beat against his own sides.
Once I heard a wounded bird give three or four beats of his
drum-call, and when I went into the grapevine thicket, where he
had fallen, I found him lying flat on his back, beating his sides
with his wings.
Whenever he drums he first struts, because he knows not how many
pairs of bright eyes are watching him shyly out of the coverts.
Once, when I had watched him strut and drum a few times, the
leaves rustled, and two hen grouse emerged from opposite sides
into the little opening where his log was. Then he strutted with
greater vanity than before, while the two hen grouse went gliding
about the place, searching for seeds apparently, but in reality
watching his every movement out of their eye corners, and
admiring him to his heart's content.
In winter I used to follow his trail through the snow to find
what he had been doing, and what he had found to eat in nature's
scarce time. His worst enemies, the man and his dog, were no
longer to be feared, being restrained by law, and he roamed the
woods with greater freedom than ever. He seemed to know that he
was safe at this time, and more than once I trailed him up to his
hiding and saw him whirr away through the open woods, sending
down a shower of snow behind him, as if in that curious way to
hide his line of flight from my eyes.
There were other enemies, however, whom no law restrained, save
the universal wood-laws of fear and hunger. Often I found the
trail of a fox crossing his in the snow; and once I followed a
double trail, fox over grouse, for nearly half a mile. The fox
had struck the trail late the previous afternoon, and followed it
to a bullbrier thicket, in the midst of which was a great cedar
in which the old beech partridge roosted. The fox went twice
around the tree, halting and looking up, then went straight away
to the swamp, as if he knew it was of no use to watch longer.
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