Winter Wren

The blight which destroyed our chestnut trees brot some benefit to winter birds in its devastating course. The bark clung to the dead trunks for years and many grubs and insects hibernated beneath.

I was on the hill one November morning, "working up" next year's wood pile. The low slanting sun rays fell warmly into the sheltered nook and Otter Brook chirruped with Spring loquacity. Except when starting the nick, swinging the ax has become automatic, and lines from half forgotten poems separated from the skein of thot:

"Soon the royal splendor of November
Will wasted be, the leaves to ashes burn,
And her few lingering warblers will remember
The spell of silence and grow taciturn."

Coat followed jacket lying on a stump — smoke from the old briar drifted alee in the faint air — ax strokes returned from the cliff with but slightly diminished intensity. Between ringing blows I heard the double parted trill of a WINTER WREN. I knew from experiences in Maine lumber camps that the little brown elf followed up ax sounds so I did not stop chopping. Each repetition of "the wild, sweet melody" sounded nearer and soon the three inch music-box was burrowing into the bark of a down chestnut within six feet of me. The ax was relieved from duty then and I sat on the tree where he was dining. Presently he came to a spot of resistant bark scarcely a yard away. The strip extended to my hand. Would it scare him off if I twisted it open? Not a scare! Into the opening he dove, gobbled two fat grubs, then sat on his comical uptilted tail and thanked me with his sweet rendering of the high notes of a miniature bagpipe.

A nor'west squall swept down over Buffalo Mountain with a sudden swirl of snow gusts but my Pyxie friend and I sat it out. He sang as cheerily and hunted as busily as in the sunlit peace preceding the outburst.

Salutamus Hiemalis! Sitting there on that November day I realized that you possessed in your indomitable little heart two virtues man has sought forever — courage and the will to "play the game" in storm or sunshine.

Among "the things I do with myself in the country" is visiting the workshop and releasing any birds who have used it for sleeping or hunting. The Fall and Winter of '28 and '29 have been remarkably mild — unequaled in a half century's remembrance, and one of these birds has remained here all season. I have escorted him to the shop door three times and nearly every morning when I go on the porch for a stove log his cheery chee-chee-chee-e-e-e greets me out of the dim dawn.

I do not see him often but when he hears movement outside the house, thin call notes from a hidden nook announce his presence. "Good morning — another day — what you goin' to do with it?"

"Write about you — you silly little imp — sticking around these cold New England rocks when you could be in Miami."