The Wit of a Duck and Other Papers
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John Burroughs >> The Wit of a Duck and Other Papers
[Illustration: [Signature: John Burroughs]]
The Riverside Literature Series
THE WIT OF A DUCK
AND OTHER PAPERS
BY
JOHN BURROUGHS
The Riverside Press Cambridge
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
BOSTON NEW YORK CHICAGO
CONTENTS
I. THE WIT OF A DUCK 5
II. AN ASTONISHED PORCUPINE 10
III. HUMAN TRAITS IN THE ANIMALS 14
IV. THE DOWNY WOODPECKER 22
V. A BARN-DOOR OUTLOOK 27
VI. WILD LIFE IN WINTER 47
VII. BIRD LIFE IN WINTER 54
VIII. A BIRDS' FREE LUNCH 63
IX. BIRD-NESTING TIME 70
X. A BREATH OF APRIL 77
XI. THE WOODCOCK'S EVENING HYMN 83
XII. THE COMING OF SUMMER 89
COPYRIGHT, 1901, BY E. H. HARRIMAN
COPYRIGHT, 1904, 1905, 1908, AND 1913 BY JOHN BURROUGHS
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
The Riverside Press
CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS
U . S . A
JOHN BURROUGHS
John Burroughs was born April 3, 1837, in a little farmhouse
among the Catskill Mountains. He was, like most other country
boys, acquainted with all the hard work of farm life and enjoyed
all the pleasures of the woods and streams. His family was poor,
and he was forced at an early date to earn his own living, which
he did by teaching school. At the age of twenty-five he chanced
to read a volume of Audubon, and this proved the turning-point in
his life, inspiring a new zeal for the study of birds and
enabling him to see with keener eyes not only the birds
themselves, but their nests and surroundings, and to hear with
more discernment the peculiar calls and songs of each.
About the time of the Civil War he accepted a clerkship in the
Treasury Department at Washington, where he remained nine years.
It was here that he wrote his first book, "Wake-Robin," and a
part of the second, "Winter Sunshine." He says: "It enabled me to
live over again the days I had passed with the birds and in the
scenes of my youth. I wrote the book sitting at a desk in front
of an iron wall. I was the keeper of a vault in which many
millions of banknotes were stored. During my long periods of
leisure I took refuge in my pen. How my mind reacted from the
iron wall in front of me, and sought solace in memories of the
birds and of summer fields and woods!" In 1873 he exchanged the
iron wall in front of his desk for a large window overlooking the
Hudson, and the vault for a vineyard. Since then he has lived on
the banks of the Hudson in the midst of the woods and fields
which he most enjoys, adding daily to his fund of information
regarding the ways of nature. His close habit of observation,
coupled with his rare gift of imparting to the reader something
of his own interest and enthusiasm, has enabled him to interpret
nature in a most delightfully fascinating way. He gives the key
to his own success when he says, "If I name every bird I see in
my walk, describe its color and ways, etc., give a lot of facts
or details about the bird, it is doubtful if my reader is
interested. But if I relate the bird in some way to human life,
to my own life,--show what it is to me and what it is in the
landscape and the season,--then do I give my reader a live bird
and not a labeled specimen."
Mr. Burroughs thoroughly enjoys the country life, and in his
strolls through the woods or in the fields he is always ready to
stop and investigate anything new or interesting that he may
chance to see among the birds, or squirrels, or bees, or insects.
His long life of observation and study has developed remarkably
quick eyesight and a keen sense of hearing, which enable him to
detect all the activities of nature and to place a correct
interpretation upon them to an extent that few other naturalists
have realized.
When he writes he is simply living over again the experiences
which have delighted him, and the best explanation of the rare
pleasure that is imparted by his writings to every reader is
given in his own words: "I cannot bring myself to think of my
books as 'works,' because so little 'work' has gone to the making
of them. It has all been play. I have gone a-fishing or camping
or canoeing, and new literary material has been the result....
The writing of the book was only a second and finer enjoyment of
my holiday in the fields or woods; not till the writing did it
really seem to strike in and become part of me"; and so the
reader seems to participate in this "finer enjoyment" of a
holiday in the fields or woods, walking arm-in-arm with the
naturalist, feeling the influence of his poetic temperament,
learning something new at every turn, and sharing the master's
enthusiasm.
I
THE WIT OF A DUCK
The homing instinct in birds and animals is one of their most
remarkable traits: their strong local attachments and their skill
in finding their way back when removed to a distance. It seems
at times as if they possessed some extra sense--the home
sense--which operates unerringly. I saw this illustrated one
spring in the case of a mallard drake.
My son had two ducks, and to mate with them he procured a drake
of a neighbor who lived two miles south of us. He brought the
drake home in a bag. The bird had no opportunity to see the road
along which it was carried, or to get the general direction,
except at the time of starting, when the boy carried him a few
rods openly.
He was placed with the ducks in a spring run, under a tree in a
secluded place on the river slope, about a hundred yards from the
highway. The two ducks treated him very contemptuously. It was
easy to see that the drake was homesick from the first hour, and
he soon left the presence of the scornful ducks.
Then we shut the three in the barn together, and kept them there
a day and a night. Still the friendship did not ripen; the ducks
and the drake separated the moment we let them out. Left to
himself, the drake at once turned his head homeward, and started
up the hill for the highway.
Then we shut the trio up together again for a couple of days, but
with the same results as before. There seemed to be but one
thought in the mind of the drake, and that was home.
Several times we headed him off and brought him back, till
finally on the third or fourth day I said to my son, "If that
drake is really bound to go home, he shall have an opportunity to
make the trial, and I will go with him to see that he has fair
play." We withdrew, and the homesick mallard started up through
the currant patch, then through the vineyard toward the highway
which he had never seen.
When he reached the fence, he followed it south till he came to
the open gate, where he took to the road as confidently as if he
knew for a certainty that it would lead him straight to his mate.
How eagerly he paddled along, glancing right and left, and
increasing his speed at every step! I kept about fifty yards
behind him. Presently he met a dog; he paused and eyed the animal
for a moment, and then turned to the right along a road which
diverged just at that point, and which led to the railroad
station. I followed, thinking the drake would soon lose his
bearings, and get hopelessly confused in the tangle of roads that
converged at the station.
But he seemed to have an exact map of the country in his mind; he
soon left the station road, went around a house, through a
vineyard, till he struck a stone fence that crossed his course at
right angles; this he followed eastward till it was joined by a
barbed wire fence, under which he passed and again entered the
highway he had first taken. Then down the road he paddled with
renewed confidence: under the trees, down a hill, through a
grove, over a bridge, up the hill again toward home.
Presently he found his clue cut in two by the railroad track;
this was something he had never before seen; he paused, glanced
up it, then down it, then at the highway across it, and quickly
concluded this last was his course. On he went again, faster and
faster.
He had now gone half the distance, and was getting tired. A
little pool of water by the roadside caught his eye. Into it he
plunged, bathed, drank, preened his plumage for a few moments,
and then started homeward again. He knew his home was on the
upper side of the road, for he kept his eye bent in that
direction, scanning the fields. Twice he stopped, stretched
himself up, and scanned the landscape intently; then on again. It
seemed as if an invisible cord was attached to him, and he was
being pulled down the road.
Just opposite a farm lane which led up to a group of farm
buildings, and which did indeed look like his home lane, he
paused and seemed to be debating with himself. Two women just
then came along; they lifted and flirted their skirts, for it was
raining, and this disturbed him again and decided him to take to
the farm lane. Up the lane he went, rather doubtingly, I thought.
In a few moments it brought him into a barnyard, where a group
of hens caught his eye. Evidently he was on good terms with hens
at home, for he made up to these eagerly as if to tell them his
troubles; but the hens knew not ducks; they withdrew suspiciously,
then assumed a threatening attitude, till one old "dominic" put up
her feathers and charged upon him viciously.
Again he tried to make up to them, quacking softly, and again he
was repulsed. Then the cattle in the yard spied this strange
creature and came sniffing toward it, full of curiosity.
The drake quickly concluded he had got into the wrong place, and
turned his face southward again. Through the fence he went into a
plowed field. Presently another stone fence crossed his path;
along this he again turned toward the highway. In a few minutes
he found himself in a corner formed by the meeting of two stone
fences. Then he turned appealingly to me, uttering the soft note
of the mallard. To use his wings never seemed to cross his mind.
Well, I am bound to confess that I helped the drake over the
wall, but I sat him down in the road as impartially as I could.
How well his pink feet knew the course! How they flew up the
road! His green head and white throat fairly twinkled under the
long avenue of oaks and chestnuts.
At last we came in sight of the home lane, which led up to the
farmhouse one hundred or more yards from the road. I was curious
to see if he would recognize the place. At the gate leading into
the lane he paused. He had just gone up a lane that looked like
that and had been disappointed. What should he do now? Truth
compels me to say that he overshot the mark: he kept on
hesitatingly along the highway.
It was now nearly night. I felt sure the duck would soon discover
his mistake, but I had not time to watch the experiment further.
I went around the drake and turned him back. As he neared the
lane this time he seemed suddenly to see some familiar landmark,
and he rushed up it at the top of his speed. His joy and
eagerness were almost pathetic.
I followed close. Into the house yard he rushed with uplifted
wings, and fell down almost exhausted by the side of his mate. A
half hour later the two were nipping the grass together in the
pasture, and he, I have no doubt, was eagerly telling her the
story of his adventures.
II
AN ASTONISHED PORCUPINE
One summer, while three young people and I were spending an
afternoon upon a mountaintop, our dogs treed a porcupine. At my
suggestion the young man climbed the tree--not a large one--to
shake the animal down. I wished to see what the dogs would do
with him, and what the "quill-pig" would do with the dogs. As the
climber advanced the rodent went higher, till the limb he clung
to was no larger than one's wrist. This the young man seized and
shook vigorously. I expected to see the slow, stupid porcupine
drop, but he did not. He only tightened his hold. The climber
tightened his hold, too, and shook the harder. Still the bundle
of quills did not come down, and no amount of shaking could bring
it down. Then I handed a long pole up to the climber, and he
tried to punch the animal down. This attack in the rear was
evidently a surprise; it produced an impression different from
that of the shaking. The porcupine struck the pole with his tail,
put up the shield of quills upon his back, and assumed his best
attitude of defense. Still the pole persisted in its persecution,
regardless of the quills; evidently the animal was astonished: he
had never had an experience like this before; he had now met a
foe that despised his terrible quills. Then he began to back
rapidly down the tree in the face of his enemy. The young man's
sweetheart stood below, a highly interested spectator. "Look out,
Sam, he's coming down!" "Be quick, he's gaining on you!" "Hurry,
Sam!" Sam came as fast as he could, but he had to look out for
his footing, and his antagonist did not. Still, he reached the
ground first, and his sweetheart breathed more easily. It looked
as if the porcupine reasoned thus: "My quills are useless against
a foe so far away; I must come to close quarters with him." But,
of course, the stupid creature had no such mental process, and
formed no such purpose. He had found the tree unsafe, and his
instinct now was to get to the ground as quickly as possible and
take refuge among the rocks. As he came down I hit him a slight
blow over the nose with a rotten stick, hoping only to confuse
him a little, but much to my surprise and mortification he
dropped to the ground and rolled down the hill dead, having
succumbed to a blow that a woodchuck or a coon would hardly have
regarded at all. Thus does the easy, passive mode of defense of
the porcupine not only dull his wits, but it makes frail and
brittle the thread of his life. He has had no struggles or
battles to harden and toughen him.
That blunt nose of his is as tender as a baby's, and he is
snuffed out by a blow that would hardly bewilder for a moment any
other forest animal, unless it be the skunk, another sluggish
non-combatant of our woodlands. Immunity from foes, from effort,
from struggle is always purchased with a price.
Certain of our natural history romancers have taken liberties
with the porcupine in one respect: they have shown him made up
into a ball and rolling down a hill. One writer makes him do this
in a sportive mood; he rolls down a long hill in the woods, and
at the bottom he is a ragged mass of leaves which his quills have
impaled--an apparition that nearly frightened a rabbit out of its
wits. Let any one who knows the porcupine try to fancy it
performing a feat like this!
Another romancer makes his porcupine roll himself into a ball
when attacked by a panther, and then on a nudge from his enemy
roll down a snowy incline into the water. I believe the little
European hedgehog can roll itself up into something like a ball,
but our porcupine does not. I have tried all sorts of tricks with
him, and made all sorts of assaults upon him, at different times,
and I have never yet seen him assume the globular form. It would
not be the best form for him to assume, because it would partly
expose his vulnerable under side. The one thing the porcupine
seems bent upon doing at all times is to keep right side up with
care. His attitude of defense is crouching close to the ground,
head drawn in and pressed down, the circular shield of large
quills upon his back opened and extended as far as possible, and
the tail stretched back rigid and held close upon the ground.
"Now come on," he says, "if you want to." The tail is his weapon
of active defense; with it he strikes upward like lightning, and
drives the quills into whatever they touch. In his chapter called
"In Panoply of Spears," Mr. Roberts paints the porcupine without
taking any liberties with the creature's known habits. He
portrays one characteristic of the porcupine very felicitously:
"As the porcupine made his resolute way through the woods, the
manner of his going differed from that of all the other kindreds
of the wild. He went not furtively. He had no particular
objection to making a noise. He did not consider it necessary to
stop every little while, stiffen himself to a monument of
immobility, cast wary glances about the gloom, and sniff the air
for the taint of enemies. He did not care who knew of his coming,
and he did not greatly care who came. Behind his panoply of
biting spears he felt himself secure, and in that security he
moved as if he held in fee the whole green, shadowy, perilous
woodland world."
III
HUMAN TRAITS IN THE ANIMALS
That there is a deal of human nature in the lower animals is a
very obvious fact; or we may turn the proposition around and say,
with equal truth, that there is a deal of animal nature in us
humans. If man is of animal origin, as we are now all coming to
believe, how could this be otherwise? We are all made of one
stuff, the functions of our bodies are practically the same, and
the workings of our instincts and our emotional and involuntary
natures are in many ways identical. I am not now thinking of any
part or lot which the lower orders may have in our intellectual
or moral life, a point upon which, as my reader may know, I
diverge from the popular conception of these matters, but of the
extent in which they share with us the ground or basement story
of the house of life--certain fundamental traits, instincts, and
blind gropings.
Man is a bundle of instincts, impulses, predilections, race and
family affinities, and antagonisms, supplemented by the gift of
reason--a gift of which he sometimes makes use. The animal is a
bundle of instincts, impulses, affinities, appetites, and race
traits, without the extra gift of reason.
The animal has sensation, perception, and power of association,
and these suffice it. Man has sensation, perception, memory,
comparison, ideality, judgment, and the like, which suffice him.
There can be no dispute, I suppose, as to certain emotions and
impulses being exclusively human, such as awe, veneration,
humility, reverence, self-sacrifice, shame, modesty, and many
others that are characteristic of what we call our moral nature.
Then there are certain others that we share with our dumb
neighbors--curiosity, jealousy, joy, anger, sex love, the
maternal and paternal instinct, the instinct of fear, of
self-preservation, and so forth.
There is at least one instinct or faculty that the animals have
far more fully developed than we have--the homing instinct, which
seems to imply a sense of direction that we have not. We have
lost it because we have other faculties to take its place, just
as we have lost that acute sense of smell that is so marvelously
developed in many of the four-footed creatures. It has long been
a contention of mine that the animals all possess the knowledge
and intelligence which is necessary to their self-preservation
and the perpetuity of the species, and that is about all. This
homing instinct seems to be one of the special powers that the
animals cannot get along without. If the solitary wasp, for
instance, could not find her way back to that minute spot in the
field where her nest is made, a feat quite impossible to you or
me, so indistinguishable to our eye is that square inch of ground
in which her hole is made; or if the fur seal could not in spring
retrace its course to the islands upon which it breeds, through a
thousand leagues of pathless sea water, how soon the tribe of
each would perish!
The animal is, like the skater, a marvel of skill in one field
or element, or in certain fixed conditions, while man's varied
but less specialized powers make him at home in many fields. Some
of the animals outsee man, outsmell him, outhear him, outrun him,
outswim him, because their lives depend more upon these special
powers than his does; but he can outwit them all because he has
the resourcefulness of reason, and is at home in many different
fields. The condor "houses herself with the sky" that she may
have a high point of observation for the exercise of that
marvelous power of vision. An object in the landscape beneath
that would escape the human eye is revealed to the soaring
buzzard. It stands these birds in hand to see thus sharply; their
dinner depends upon it. If mine depended upon such powers of
vision, in the course of time I might come to possess it. I am
not certain but that we have lost another power that I suspect
the lower animals possess--something analogous to, or identical
with, what we call telepathy--power to communicate without words,
or signs, or signals. There are many things in animal life, such
as the precise concert of action among flocks of birds and fishes
and insects, and, at times, the unity of impulse among land
animals, that give support to the notion that the wild creatures
in some way come to share one another's mental or emotional
states to a degree and in a way that we know little or nothing
of. It seems important to their well-being that they should have
such a gift--something to make good to them the want of language
and mental concepts, and insure unity of action in the tribe.
Their seasonal migrations from one part of the country to another
are no doubt the promptings of an inborn instinct called into
action in all by the recurrence of the same outward conditions;
but the movements of the flock or the school seem to imply a
common impulse that is awakened on the instant in each member of
the flock. The animals have no systems or methods in the sense
that we have, but like conditions with them always awaken like
impulses, and unity of action is reached without outward
communication.
The lower animals seem to have certain of our foibles, and
antagonisms, and unreasoning petulancies. I was reminded of this
in reading the story President Roosevelt tells of a Colorado bear
he once watched at close quarters. The bear was fussing around a
carcass of a deer, preparatory to burying it. "Once the bear lost
his grip and rolled over during the course of some movement, and
this made him angry and he struck the carcass a savage whack,
just as a pettish child will strike a table against which it has
knocked itself." Who does not recognize that trait in himself:
the disposition to vent one's anger upon inanimate things--upon
his hat, for instance, when the wind snatches it off his head and
drops it in the mud or leads him a chase for it across the
street; or upon the stick that tripped him up, or the beam
against which he bumped his head? We do not all carry our anger
so far as did a little three-year-old maiden I heard of, who, on
tripping over the rockers of her chair, promptly picked herself
up, and carrying the chair to a closet, pushed it in and
spitefully shut the door on it, leaving it alone in the dark to
repent its wrong-doing.
Our blind, unreasoning animal anger is excited by whatever
opposes or baffles us. Of course, when we yield to the anger, we
do not act as reasonable beings, but as the unreasoning animals.
It is hard for one to control this feeling when the opposition
comes from some living creature, as a balky horse or a kicking
cow, or a pig that will not be driven through the open gate. When
I was a boy, I once saw one of my uncles kick a hive of bees off
the stand and halfway across the yard, because the bees stung him
when he was about to "take them up." I confess to a fair share of
this petulant, unreasoning animal or human trait, whichever it
may be, myself. It is difficult for me to refrain from jumping
upon my hat when, in my pursuit of it across the street, it has
escaped me two or three times just as I was about to put my hand
upon it, and as for a balky horse or a kicking cow, I never could
trust myself to deal reasonably with them. Follow this feeling
back a few thousand years, and we reach the time when our
forbears looked upon all the forces in nature as in league
against them. The anger of the gods as shown in storms and winds
and pestilence and defeat is a phase of the same feeling. A wild
animal caught in a steel trap vents its wrath upon the bushes and
sticks and trees and rocks within its reach. Something is to
blame, something baffles it and gives it pain, and its teeth
and claws seek every near object. Of course it is a blind
manifestation of the instinct of self-defense, just as was my
uncle's act when he kicked over his beehive, or as is the
angler's impatience when his line gets tangled and his hook gets
fast. If the Colorado bear caught his fish with a hook and line,
how many times would he lose his temper during the day!
I do not think many animals show their kinship to us by
exhibiting the trait I am here discussing. Probably birds do not
show it at all. I have seen a nest-building robin baffled and
delayed, day after day, by the wind that swept away the straws
and rubbish she carried to the top of a timber under my porch.
But she did not seem to lose her temper. She did not spitefully
reclaim the straws and strings that would persist in falling to
the porch floors, but cheerfully went away in search of more. So
I have seen a wood thrush time after time carrying the same piece
of paper to a branch from which the breeze dislodged it, without
any evidence of impatience. It is true that when a string or a
horsehair which a bird is carrying to its nest gets caught in a
branch, the bird tugs at it again and again to free it from
entanglement, but I have never seen any evidence of impatience or
spite against branch or string, as would be pretty sure to be the
case did my string show such a spirit of perversity. Why your dog
bites the stone which you roll for him when he has found it, or
gnaws the stick you throw, is not quite clear, unless it be from
the instinct of his primitive ancestors to bite and kill the game
run down in the chase. Or is the dog trying to punish the stick
or stone because it will not roll or fly for him? The dog is
often quick to resent a kick, be it from man or beast, but I have
never known him to show anger at the door that slammed to and hit
him. Probably, if the door held him by his tail or his limb, it
would quickly receive the imprint of his teeth.