Wood Wanderings

TO-DAY the September west winds have begun the fall house-cleaning by sweeping the tops of the pine woods. All the morning the little brown scales which nestle close to the base of each pine leaf as it grows, protecting it from the withering force of the midsummer sun, have been soaring and spinning in high glee, curiously lighting up with brown glimmers the solemn sanctuaries beneath.

It is the first prophecy of winter under the sheltering boughs where still lingers the midsummer warmth. The chickadees, going their forenoon rounds, scold about it in a brisk fashion that is in tune with the briskness of the wind itself. In the languor of the south wind the chickadee has a little lazy song which he sings often, “Sleepee, sleepee,” a tuneful little ditty that makes you want to stretch out on the brown carpet with a mound of green moss for a pillow and let the resinous odors lull you to sleep. I always feel that the bird himself murmurs it with one eye closed and himself in danger of falling off the perch in slumber.

None of that song to-day. It’s “chick-chickachick, chick-a-chicadee dee dee,” with a snap in it like the crack of a whip. Yet the flock soon passes on, and in the dreamy warmth of the grove you know little of the vivid touch in the wind. Only enough of it comes through to set the little brown pine motes to whirling merrily as they fall, vanishing from sight like flitting elves as they touch the brown carpet below.

There was another elf-like transformation, an appearing and a disappearing, in the woods this morning. That was a Pyrameis atalanta that kept vanishing into the trunk of a big pitch pine. This, the red admiral, own cousin to the familiar Pyrameis carduii, the painted lady, is a butterfly whose movements are as snappy as those of the west wind on these house-cleaning days. Rich red, white and black are the colors on the upper side of its wings, but when these are closed there is exposed only the under side, which makes the creature so exactly like a rough chip of the pitch-pine bark that when he lights on the trunk the vanishing is complete. Out of nothing he sprang, a vivid flash of darting red and white flipping before your eyes, then he darted up to the pine trunk that seemed to open and let him go in, so completely did he transform his bright colors into a bit of brown bark.

The more I see of woodland glades and sun-dappled depths and the creatures that inhabit them the less I am inclined to smile at the elder races of the world that peopled them with fairies, sprites, and goblins. Why should they not believe in these things? It is hard sometimes for us to forego all lingering remnants of faith in such inhabitants of field and wood.