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Page 23
Somehow, there seems to be always a wag or clown among each group of
animals,--some one species in which the amusing or the grotesque is
prominent. Among these clownish fellows I should class the black
vulture, or john-crow. He is not a crow at all, but gets that name
probably because so historic a tribe as Corvus must have some
representative, and the real crow, so common at the North, is one of the
few birds that are not much seen in this quarter. John unites in his
ways at once fuss and business. He alternates oddly between bustle and
gravity. Seated stately and motionless for hours on a leafless tree, he
will suddenly, as if struck by a new idea, start off on a tour that
might have been dictated by telegram. He does not sail and circle like
his friend and comrade, never being distracted by soaring pretensions,
but goes straight to his object. His flight is a regular succession of
short flaps, with quiescent intervals between the series. The flaps are
usually four, sometimes five or six. I am sure he counts them. You have
seen a pursy gentleman in black hurrying along the street and tapping
his boot with a cane, as though keeping time. Fancy this gentleman in
the air, dressed in feathers, his coat-skirt sheared off alarmingly
short and square, and looking like a cherub in jet, all head and
wings,--although John is not exactly a cherub in his habits. A white
spot on each wing adds a bit of the harlequin to his style.
Were I to seek a "funny man" among the quadrupeds, I should name another
dweller of the Southwestern prairies, the jack-rabbit,--John II. let us
call him. Nobody ever gets quite accustomed to the preternatural ears of
this hare. In proportion they are to those of others of the Leporid�
nearly what the ears of the mule are to those of the horse. When this
bit of bad drawing, as big as a fawn and weighing ten pounds or so,
jumps up before you and bounds away at railroad speed, he makes you rub
your eyes. You expect the apparition to disappear like other
apparitions, especially as it moves off with vast rapidity. But it does
not. As suddenly as it started it is transformed into a prong like an
immense letter V, projecting in perfect stillness from the grass a
hundred yards off. You advance, and the same proceeding is repeated.
Jack is obviously deep in guns, and knows the difference in power
between a muzzle- and a breech-loader, if he has not ascertained, indeed,
what number shot you have in your cartridge. He varies his distance
according to these contingencies. Only, he has not as yet learned to
gauge the greyhound: that dog is frequently kept for his benefit.
A special endowment of this immediate locality is a large and permanent
sheet of water, three or four miles by one, which bears, and deserves,
the name of Eagle Lake. For, though overhung by no cliffs or lofty
pines, it is far more the haunt of eagles, of both the bald and the gray
species, than most tarns possessing those appendages of the romantic.
Its dense fringe of fine trees, among them live-oaks a single one of
which would make the fortune of an average city park, can well spare the
Conifers. They are all hung with Spanish moss, a feature which conflicts
with the impression of lack of moisture conveyed by the light ashen
color of the bark and short annual growth of many of the smaller trees.
Here and there tiny inlets are overhung with undergrowth which supplies
a safe nesting-place to a multitude of birds of many kinds. The surface
of the lake I have never seen free from ducks of one species or another,
and generally of half a dozen. Almost the whole family, if we except the
canvas-back and the red-head, visit it at one or another period. One
item in their bill of fare is the nut of the water-lily, the receptacles
of which, resembling the rose of a watering-pot, dot the shallows in
great quantity. The green, cable-like roots of this plant are afloat,
forming at some points heavy windrows. Some say they are torn up from
the bottom by the alligators; but it is more probable that they are
loosened and broken by the continual tugging of the divers. The
alligators are not vegetarians, and they are not using their snouts much
at this season. The young shoots of the Nymph�a are doubtless tempting
food, as those of the Vallisneria are on the Chesapeake and the North
Carolina sounds. Sustenance may be drawn also from the roots of the
rushes and reeds which cover with their yellow stems and leaves many
acres of the lake, and are thronged now by several species of small
birds.
Hawks, of course, are always in sight, and that in astonishing variety,
from the osprey down to two or three varieties of the sparrow-hawk. A
monograph on the Raptores of Eagle Lake would be a most comprehensive
work. The osprey, notwithstanding the abundance of his scaly prey, is
not common: probably the field is too limited for him. Ducks are the
attraction of the other large species. In summer, ducks are rather
secondary among the water-birds, the ibis, water-turkey, and flamingo
imparting a tropical character to the scene that somewhat obscures the
more familiar forms. There is even a survival here of birds that have
nearly disappeared from the American fauna,--the paroquet, once so
common in the Mississippi Valley as far north as the Ohio, being
sometimes seen, and, if I mistake not, a second species of humming-bird
straying north by way of Mexico.
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