“Catfish John,” the old fisherman with whom I often talked about the birds and animals in the dune country, had very little use for them. He said that “they flopped ’round a whole lot, an’ seemed to keep a goin’.” He “didn’t never find no eggs, an’ they didn’t seem to set anywheres. They git away with the bait when its left out, an’ they seem mostly to live off’n fish an’ dead things they find on the beach an’ floatin’ round in the lake. They’ll tackle a mouthful big enough to choke a horse if they like the looks of it.”
He thought that “them that roosted out on the net stakes didn’t go to sleep entirely, or they’d slip off in the night.”
The gull has many charms for the ornithologist and the poet. He is valuable to the artist, as an accent in the sky, when he is on the wing, giving a thrill of life to the most desolate landscape.
“THEM THAT ROOSTED OUT ON THE NET STAKES”
He is interesting to the eye when proudly walking along the beach, or sitting silently, with hundreds of others, in solemn conclave on the shore. Old piles and floating objects in the lake have an added interest with his trim figure perched upon them. The perched birds seem magnified and ghostly when one comes suddenly upon them in the fog and they disappear with shrill cries into the mists.
There is no gleam of human interest in the eye of a gull. It is fierce, cold, and utterly wild. The birds we love most are those that nest in the land in which we live. The home is the real bond among living things, and our feathered friends creep easily into our affections when we can hear their love songs and watch their home life.
The transient winged tribes, that come and go—like ships on the sea—and rear their young in other lands, arouse our poetic reflections, challenge our admiration, and excite our love of the beautiful. They delight our eyes but not our hearts.
The graceful forms of the gulls give an ethereal note of exaltation to the spirit of the landscape—a suggestion of the Infinite—as they soar in long curves in the azure blue, or against the dark clouds that roll up in portentous masses from the distant horizon and sweep across the heavens over the great lake. They are the heralds of the storms, and a typical expression of life in the sky.
Their matchless grace on the wing, as they wheel in the teeth of the tempest or glide with set pinions in the currents of the angry winds, makes them a part of nature’s dramas in the heavens—aloof and remote from earthly things—mingling with the unseen forces and mysteries of the Great Unknown.
These rovers of the clouds seem to love no abodes but the stormy skies and foaming waves. Their flights are desultory when the winds are still. When the calms brood over the face of the waters, they congregate on the glassy surface, like little white fleets at anchor, and rest for hours, until hunger again takes them into the air.
They often leave the lake and soar over the dune country on windy days, searching far inland for food, but when night comes they return to the water.
In early August they come down from the Lake Superior country and from the more distant north, where perhaps many of them have spent the summer near the arctic circle. They bring with them their big brown young, from the rocky islands in those remote regions, and to these islands they will return in the spring. The young birds do not don their silver-gray plumage until the second year.
In the autumn the unseen paths in the sky are filled with countless wings on their way to the tropics, but the gulls remain to haunt the bare landscapes and the chill waters of the lake, until the return of the great multitudes of migrant birds in April or May, when they leave for their northern homes.
In the wake of the gulls come the terns—those graceful, gliding little creatures in pearl-gray robes—which skim and hover over the waves, and search them for their daily food.
There is something peculiarly elf-like and wispy in their flight. Agile and keen eyed, with their mosquito-like bills pointed downward, they dart furtively, like water-sprites, along the crests of the billows, seeming to winnow the foam and spray.
With low plaintive cries the scattered flocks follow the surf lines against the wind and the dipping wings can be seen far out over the lake.
They often pause in the air, and drop like plummets, entirely out of sight under water, in pursuit of unsuspecting small fish, to reappear with the wiggling tails of the little victims protruding from their bills. Many thousands of them patrol the shores and waters, but they also are transients, and soon wing their ways to colder or warmer climes.
The nature lover finds manifold charms in the bird life of the dune country. There are many varieties to interest him. While we may endeavor to restrict our consideration to the purely artistic side of the subject, it would be impossible to define a point that would separate the artistic instinct from the love of the live things, and of nature in general, for there is no such point. One merges naturally into the other.
It is not necessary for a lover of nature to have an exact scientific knowledge of all the things he sees in order to derive enjoyment from them, but a trained observer is more sensitive to the poetic influences of nature, has a wider range of vision, a greater capacity for appreciation, and is more deeply responsive to the subtle harmonies than one who is only susceptible to the more obvious aspects.
The love of the Little Things which are concealed from the ordinary eye comes only to one who has sought out their hiding-places, and learned their ways by tender and long association. Their world and ours is fundamentally the same, and to know them is to know ourselves.
We sometimes cannot tell whether the clear, flutelike note from the depths of the ravine comes from the thrush or the oriole, but we know that the little song has carried us just a little nearer to nature’s heart than we were before. If we could see the singer and learn his name, his silvery tones would be still more pure and sweet when he comes again.
The spring songs in the dune country seem to exalt and sanctify the forest aisles, and to weave a spell out over the open spaces. The still sands seem to awaken under the vibrant melodies of the choirs among the trees. These sanctuaries are not for those who would “shower shot into a singing tree,” but for him who comes to listen and to worship.
The voices of the dunes are in many keys. The cries of the gulls and crows—the melodies of the songsters—the wind tones among the trees—the roar of the surf on the shore—the soft rustling of the loose sands, eddying among the beach grasses—the whirr of startled wings in the ravines—the piping of the frogs and little toads in the marshy spots—the chorus of the katydids and locusts—the prolonged notes of the owls at night—and many other sounds, all blend into the greater song of the hills, and become a part of the appeal to our higher emotions, in this land of enchantment and mystery.
SOMETIMES we find interesting little comedies mapped on the sands.
One morning the July sun had come from behind the clouds, after a heavy rain, and quickly dried the surface, leaving the firm, wet sand underneath. On the dunes, walks are particularly delightful when the moist, packed sand becomes a yellow floor, but it requires much endurance and enthusiasm to trudge through miles of soft sand on a hot day and retain a contemplative mood.
We suddenly came upon some turtle tracks, beginning abruptly out on an open space, indicating that the traveler had probably withdrawn into the privacy and shelter of his mobile castle, and resumed his journey when the sun appeared. All traces of his arrival at the point where the tracks began had been