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READING A
CHECK-LIST MANY
literary men
have been given to reading in dictionaries. The articles are brief, but
full of
substance, and by no means so disconnected as they look. One
continually
suggests another, and as a man whose business is with words follows the
trail
of these suggestions, turning the big book over, a half-hour will pass
almost
before he knows it. And in that time he may have gathered more
information
worth keeping than twice the same time devoted to the casualties of a
newspaper
would have been likely to furnish. So a
student of
birds may spend many a profitable season, longer or shorter, in
rummaging over
the A. O. U. Check-List. The initial stands for the American
Ornithologists’
Union, and the latest edition of the book was published in 1910. We had
waited
for it impatiently, so many things had happened during the fifteen
years since
the second edition was issued, and on having it in hand we hastened to
look it
through from cover to cover. Errors and
omissions were noted with a measure of innocently malicious
satisfaction; for
as a matter of course, if we happened to have lived in some
out-of-the-way
corner, we had collected certain bits of local knowledge which the
learned
compilers of the work had overlooked, or never possessed — or,
conceivably, had
considered too unimportant for mention. But our main interest just now
was in
marking changes and additions. Here a subspecies, too hastily made
(naming a
new bird is one of the roads to glory, “and many there be that find
it”), had
been cast out as unworthy, fuller information having shown that it
graded too
closely into another form. Here a new subspecies had been accepted, or
put on
probation, as valid, or likely to prove so. And here, there, and
everywhere,
alas and alas, old familiar scientific names, so called, had given
place to
new, till we groaned in spirit and were ready to declare that it was
only the
nicknames, “trivial” names, common names, vulgar names (belittle them
how you
will), that stood any chance of holding their own, and therefore were
worth
retaining in the memory. But all
these
technical details having been noted, and the volume set in its place on
the
shelf, it still serves what we may almost call its best use — as a book
to read
in at odd times. You have
an idle
five minutes while waiting (patiently, of course) for breakfast or
luncheon. Take down
the
Check-List and open it at random. You are pretty sure to strike
something worth
while, something that will at least administer a fillip to the
imagination or
the memory. Here, for instance, is Trudeau’s tern. What about it? You
have
never seen one, for you have no collection, and even if you had, seeing
a
bird’s skin is hardly to be accepted as seeing the bird. And you read
that its
home is on the southern coast of South America, that it breeds in
Argentina,
and that it has twice been found in the United States, once on Long
Island and
once (where the type specimen was taken — the bird, that is, from which
the
species was originally described and named) at Great Egg Harbor, New
Jersey. It is
among the
possibilities, your pardon being begged, and ours being a sizable
country, that
you have never so much as heard of Great Egg Harbor; but henceforth, if
your
memory is anything like Macaulay’s, the name will have a certain
interest for
you. “Great Egg Harbor?” you will say, if you chance to read of a
murder or a
robbery committed thereabout (such cheerful events being the staple of
telegraphic news), “Great Egg Harbor, New Jersey? Oh yes, that’s where
the
first Trudeau tern known to science, was captured, in 1838.” And
perhaps,
though I suppose this is hardly to be expected, (newspaper readers’
time being
precious), you will be at the trouble to look up the place on the map —
a
little south of Atlantic City, a pleasure resort which every one, even
a
Californian, who has so many excellent resorts of his own, may be
presumed to
have heard of. But what a
distance
for a bird, even for such a swift one, to have strayed from home! From
Argentina to New Jersey — and that only to be “collected.” Poor bird! A
Captain
Cook among terns. But what a crowning bit of luck for Mr. Audubon! Another
day, and
the book falls open of its own accord at page 184. You are among the
kingfishers. One of them (there are only three in North America, though
there
are a hundred and fifty in the world), has what you have always thought
about
the most beautiful of all scientific names, Ceryle
alcyon. Who could imagine anything prettier, or
better-sounding. Ceryle alcyon! It
falls from the tongue
like music, and suggests the fairest of weather. But you
are chiefly
concerned just now with another one, Ceryle
americana septentrionalis. Not so poetical an appellation by
a good
deal, nor, to your North American ears, so very appropriate, since the
bird, so
far from being a peculiarly Northern species, finds its northern limit
in the
southernmost corner of the United States. No matter for that, however.
You know
the reason of the name, and acknowledge it a sound one. What you are
thinking
of now is not the name, but the bird itself, and the bright Texas day
on which
you saw it. You had
sauntered a
few miles out of the city of San Antonio, spying to right and left for
new
birds in that, to you, new part of the world, when suddenly, up a
little shaded
brook, sitting on a low branch overhanging the water, you beheld this
lovely
little kingfisher. What a treat it was to your eyes! How glossy were
its green
feathers! And what a wide-awake, businesslike air it had! That was
many years
ago, as years are beginning to be reckoned in your lessening calendar,
and you
have never seen one since. But reading these few words about it here in
the
Check-List brings the whole delightful scene before you almost as fresh
as new.
Memory is among the most precious of an old man’s treasures. Again you
turn the
leaves. You are nearer the end of the book this time, among the
warblers, and
near the top of the right-hand page are the words, like magic in their
effect:
“Black-throated Green Warbler.” You have not seen the wearer of that
name for
three years, but if it were ten times as long, you could still see it
plainly.
Well as you know it, however, you had forgotten what a traveler it has
been
found to be. A bird of the Eastern States, you would have said; but the
Check-List tells you that it breeds as far west as Minnesota, and has
been
known to wander to “Arizona, Greenland, and Europe”: and you recall (an
event
too recent for record in the Check-List) that a friend has told you of
having
taken one within a few months on the Farallon Islands! Think of that
for a bird
so small, and, as you would have thought, from all you have seen of it,
so
little enterprising. The frail
thing
must have strayed far out of its course while migrating, and then been
caught
in a gale, you suppose, and swept out on the Pacific. There, hard beset
and
ready to perish, it descried a rock jutting up out of the wilderness of
water,
and with a grateful heart dropped down upon it, safe at last — only to
have its
life blown out by this devotee of science. The
Farallon
Islands, Greenland, and Europe! Strange over-sea and cross-country
journeyings,
surely, for our little four, or five-inch warbler. As you think of it,
you can
see its black throat and golden cheeks, and hear again that most
musically
hoarse, drowsy voice repeating, out of the top of a tall Massachusetts
pine,
“Trees, trees, murmuring trees.” You can
even
remember the very clump of evergreens, in what is now part of the
Arnold
Arboretum, under which you first heard it, not knowing, nor being able
to
discover, who its author was. A brook trickled along the foot of the
hill, and
there you stayed evening after evening to listen to the sweet song of
the
veery. You recall, too, your satisfaction, a few years afterward, in
printing
in a good place your version of the warbler’s tune, a version which you
were
young enough, and simple enough, to hope might be kept in remembrance. Well, that
was long
ago, and whether any one else remembers it or not, it pleases you now
to say it
over to yourself, as you seem once more to hear the bird saying it,
“Trees,
trees, murmuring trees.” Yes, yes, there is much good literature in the
Check-List. For the right reader, and at the right time, its briefest
prose may
turn to poetry. And now
did you
ever hear of Piddletown, Dorsetshire, England? Ten to one you never
did. Yet
here in the Check-List you may learn that, surprising as it sounds, it
holds a
small but not unimportant place in the annals of American ornithology.
Our
North American bittern, one of the most original of characters, a
pretty strict
recluse, but, when in the mood for it, making noise enough for two or
three,
was named from a specimen taken in that English village (or city, or
hamlet,
whichever it is) almost a hundred years ago. How it came to be so far
from home
is a puzzle, — to you, at any rate, — as it is, likewise, how the
species had
so long eluded scientific description. Of all places in the world, that
our
queer old stake-driver and pumper, after lifting up its hollow,
far-sounding
voice in our grassy American meadows from time immemorial, should have
been
obliged to go to Piddletown, England, for its christening! A Boston
deacon, a
devout and, better still, a good man, once remarked to his
Sunday-school class
(I can hear his voice now, after more than forty years), “There’s a lot
of good
reading in John,” meaning in the Gospel that, rightly or wrongly,
passes under
the name of that favorite disciple. And so, I repeat, there’s plenty of
good
reading in the Check-List. Once more
(for in
this alluring and easy kind of study your “finallies” and “lastlies”
and “in
conclusions” are liable to be as many as tailed out those long-winded,
old-fashioned
sermons to which you listened, if you did listen, in your childhood,
while the
enviable man seated at the “head of the pew” was happily lost in a
doze) — once
more, I say, but the once may run into twice or thrice, here is the
yellow-billed magpie. You remember, and think of it often, the long
sunny day
that you spent in pursuit of the bird down in the beautiful Carmel
Valley, near
Monterey; but you have never noticed till this minute that the type of
the
species was taken here at Santa Barbara seventy-five years ago. You
wonder how
long it is since the last one was seen in this neighborhood. There is
nothing
of the kind here now, unless it be on the other side of the mountains,
a long
distance from the city itself; so much you can vouch for. First and
last you
have seen a good many from car-windows in riding up and down the
Sacramento and
San Joaquin Valleys, but you have never seen nor heard of one in Santa
Barbara.
It is a good bird to see anywhere, a bird of a most remarkably
restricted range
(like the Florida jay — and not
like the black-throated green warbler), being found in a certain small
section
of California and nowhere else in the world. You are pleased to know
that
Audubon named it (after his friend Nuttall — Pica
nuttalli) from an example taken in this most delightful of
California places. Few birds
but
possess some interesting peculiarity. This magpie is not the only one
that had
its scientific birth in Santa Barbara. The tricolored blackbird is
another.
This you have now and then seen here, though it is hardly to be
accounted
common; one of the most taking members of its genus, with a startling
snow-white patch on its glossy jet-black wing. The white-winged
blackbird you
have always felt like calling it. You will never read its name (the
bird’s
third color is red) without remembering your first sight and sound of
it (the
first sound especially) in a dense clump of tall reeds, out of which
came a
most unearthly chorus of cat-like yawlings. “Something new!” you
exclaimed, and
after a little patient waiting you saw the blackbird signed with those
impressive white wing-marks. Yes, indeed, something new, and something
of the
best. Suffer me
to say
once more, and this time “finally and in conclusion,” for the right man
there’s
a world of good reading in a Check-List. |