before going home from my morning sessions with the little lover and other feathered friends, i often took a gallop at the foot of the hills to visit a gigantic old tree, the king of the valley. one such ride is especially marked in my memory. it was on one of california's most perfect mornings. when the sun had risen over the valley, the fog dissolved before it, sinking away until only small white clouds were left in the tender blue of the notches between the red hills; while the bared vault overhead had that pure, deep, satisfying color peculiar to fog-cleared skies; and the cool fresh air was full of exhilaration. it put mountain billy so in tune with the morning that, when i chirrupped to him, shaking the reins on his neck, he quickly broke into a lope and his ringing hoofs beat time to my song as we sped down the valley, past vineyards and orchards and yellow fields of ripening grain. the free swift motion was a delight in itself, and after days and weeks given to the details of nest-making, shut away from the world in our little remote valley at the foot of the mountains, now, when we came[113] to a break in the hills and our nostrils were greeted by the cool salt breeze coming from the pacific, suddenly the whole horizon broadened; the inclosing valley walls were overlooked; we were galloping under the high arching heavens in a wind blowing from far over the wide ocean.
here stood the great sycamore, with branches swaying; for the tree faced this break in the hills. it seemed as if the old monarch, with roots firmly planted, had battled for its ground; and now, as a conqueror, stood with arms uplifted to meet the ocean gales. i had never before appreciated the dignity of those straight upreared shafts, the vital strength of those deep grappling roots, the mighty grandeur of this old battle king.
when one of the trunks fell, i had to hunt the sycamore over to find where it came from, not missing it in the massive framework that was left. the giant measured twenty-three feet and a half in circumference, three feet from the ground. its enormous branches stretched out horizontally so far that, between the body of the tree and the tips that hung to the earth, there was a wide corridor where one could promenade on horseback. in fact, the tree spanned, from the tip of one branch to the tip of the other, one hundred and fifty-eight feet. in the photograph, the figure of a person is almost lost in the complicated network of the frame of the tree. the treetop was a grove in itself. a flock of blackbirds[114] flying up into it was lost among the branches.
the big sycamore the big sycamore
the ranchman knew the sycamore as the 'swallow tree,' because in former years, before the valley was settled, swallows that have since taken to barns built there. between three and four hundred of them plastered their nests on the underside of the big limbs, about half way up the tree, where the bark was rough. they built so close together that the nests made a solid mass of mud. for several seasons, it was said, "they had bad luck." they began building before the rainy season was over, and all but a few dozen nests which were in especially protected places were swept away. the number of nests was so enormous that the ground was covered several inches deep with mud.
billy used to improve his time by nibbling barley while i watched birds in the sycamore corridor. we had not been there long before i discovered a bee's nest in the hollow of one of the trunks. the owners were busily flying in and out, and a pair of big bee-birds flew down from their nest in the treetop and saved themselves trouble by lunching at this convenient ground floor restaurant. as i sat on billy, facing the nest, one of the pair swept down over the mouth of the hole, caught a bee and settled back on the branch to swallow it. this seemed to be the regular performance, and was kept up so[115] continuously, even when we were standing close by, that if, as is supposed, the birds eat only drones, few but workers would be left in that hive.
the flycatchers seemed well suited to the sycamore; they were birds of large ideas and sweeping flights. their nest was at the top of the tree; probably eighty feet from the ground, but when one of them flew down, instead of coming a branch at a time, he would set his wings and, giving a loud cry,—as a child shouts when pushing off his sled at the top of a steep hill,—he would sail obliquely down from the treetop to the foot of the hillside beyond. when looking for his material he would hover over the field like a ph?be. then, on returning, unlike the other birds who lived in the tree and used the branches as ladders, he would start from the ground and with labored flights climb obliquely up the air to the treetop. once his material dangled a foot behind him. the birds seemed to enjoy these great flights.
their nest was not finished, and while one went for material, the other—presumably the male—guarded the nest. as there was nothing to guard as yet, it often seemed a matter of venting his own spleen! when not occupied in arranging his plumes, he would shoot down at every small bird that came upstairs; a cowardly proceeding, but perhaps he thought it necessary[116] to keep his hand in against meeting bigger boys than he! when coming with material, one of the bee-birds got caught in a heavy rope of cobweb that dangled from the nest, and had to flutter hard to extricate itself. about their nests these birds seemed as home-loving as any others. their domesticity quite surprised me; they had always seemed such harsh, scolding, aggressive birds! when one of them sat among the green leaves, pluming the soft sulphur yellow feathers of its breast, it looked so gentle and attractive that it was a shock when the familiar petulant screams again jarred the air. the birds often hunted from the fence beyond the sycamore, and flew from post to post with legs dangling, shaking their wings as they lit, with a shrill kit' r' r' r' r'.
the sycamore was a regular apartment house; so many birds were moving among the boughs it was impossible to tell where they all lived. one day i found a pair of doves sitting on a sunny branch above me. the one i took to be the male sat perched crosswise, while his mate sat facing him, lengthwise of the limb. he calmly fluffed out his feathers and preened himself, while his meek spouse watched him. she fluttered her wings, teasing him to feed her, but he kept on dressing out his plumes. then she edged a little closer, and almost essayed to touch his majesty with her pretty blue bill, but he sat with[117] lordly composure quite ignoring her existence till a blackbird bustled up, when they both started nervously, and turning, sat demurely side by side on the limb, the wind tilting their long tails.
a pair of bright orange orioles had a nest in the sycamore, though i never should have known it had i not seen them go to it to feed their young. it was a well shaded cradle surely, with its canopy of big green leaves.
there were a good many hints to be had, first and last. a song sparrow appeared and stood on a branch with its tail perked up in a business-like way as if it had been feeding a brood. a wren came to the tree,—a mere pinch of feathers in the giant sycamore,—and though i lost sight of it, many a hollow up in the fourteenth story might have afforded a home for the pretty dear without any one's being the wiser, unless it were the bee-bird in the attic. a family of bush-tits flew about in the sycamore top, looking like pin-heads in a grove of trees. a black ph?be sometimes lit on the fence posts under the branches—it wanted to find a nesting place about the windmill in the opposite field, i felt sure, though a boy had told me that the bird sometimes plastered its nest onto the branches of the big tree itself. besides all the rest, rosy linnets and blue lazuli buntings made the old tree ring with their musical roundelays.
one day when i rode down to the sycamore,[118] the meadow bordering it was full of haycocks, and a rabbit ran out from under one of them, frightened by the clatter of billy's hoofs. that morning the tree was fairly alive with blackbirds and doves—what a deafening medley the blackbirds made! in the fields near the sycamore flocks of redwings went swinging over the tall gleaming mustard. this was a great place for blackbirds, for the big tree was on the edge of the one piece of marsh land in the valley, and they were quick to take advantage of its reeds for nesting places.
the cienaga—as they called the swamp—was used as a pasture. it was pleasant to look out upon, from under the branches of the great tree. a group of horses stood in the shade of a cluster of oaks on the farther side of it, while the cows, a beautiful herd of buff and white guernseys, waded through the swamp grass to drink near the sycamore, and the blackbirds wound in and out among them. i had been in a dry land so long it was hard to believe there was actual water in the marsh till i saw it drip from their chins and heard the sucking sound as they laboriously dragged their feet out of the mud—a noise that took me back to eastern pastures, but sounded strangely unfamiliar here in this rainless land. one of the pretty guernseys with a white star in her forehead strayed up under the tree, and the shadows of the leaves moved[119] over her as she raised her sensitive face to see who was there.
the son of the ranchman who owned the dairy—the one who invited me down to see the play between his dog romulus and the burrowing owl—said that when herding cows by the sycamore he once caught sight of a coyote wolf. he clapped his hands to send his dog, romulus, after the wolf; and the noise frightened the wild creature so that he started to run up the hill across the road from the sycamore. romulus followed hard at his heels till they got well up the hillside, when the coyote felt that he was on his own ground and turned on the dog, who fled back to his master with his tail between his legs. the lad, clapping his hands, set the dog on the coyote again, and this animated but bloodless performance was repeated and kept up till both were tired out, the animals chasing each other back and forth from the sycamore to the hillside with as much energy and perhaps as much courage as was displayed by that historic king of france who had five thousand men and—
"... marched them up a hill and then
he marched them down again."
on one side of the sycamore was a great wall of weeds higher than my head when on horseback; a dense mass of yellow mustard, and fragrant wild celery which was covered with[120] delicate white bloom. i saw blackbirds carrying material into this thicket, but as i had known of neighbors' horses getting bitten by rattlesnakes among the high weeds, did not think it worth while to wade around in it much for such common birds as they. but one day, seeing a pair of rare blue grosbeaks fly down into the tangle, i turned billy right in after them, though holding his head well up in consideration of the snakes. the birds vanished, so we stood still to wait. suddenly i heard a slight sound as of something slipping through the weeds at billy's feet, and looking down saw a snake marked like a rattler; and as it slid by billy's hoof i noticed with horror that the end of its tail was blunt—the harmless gopher snake that resembles the rattler has a tapering tail! i gazed at it spellbound, but in the dim light could not make out whether it had rattles or not. i had seen enough, however, and whipping up billy was out of those weeds in a hurry. safely outside, i looked at my little horse remorsefully—what if my desire to see a new nest had been the cause of his getting a rattlesnake bite!
the next day when i went down to the sycamore a german was mowing there with a pair of mules. he was a typical rhinelander, with blue eyes and long curling hair and beard, and as he drove he sang in a deep rich voice one of the beautiful melodies of his fatherland.[121] screened by the branches, i listened quite unmindful of my work till my reverie was interrupted by the man's giving a harsh cry to his mules. it was only an aside, however, for he dropped back into his song in the same rich sympathetic voice.
in riding out from the tree on my way home, i saw that he was mowing just where the snake had been, and warned him to be careful lest the horses get bitten. at the word rattlesnake his blue eyes dilated, and he assured me that he would be on his guard. seeing my glasses and note-book, he asked if i were studying birds. when told that i was, from his seat on the mowing-machine he took off his hat and bowed with the air of a lord, saying in broken english, "i am pleased to meet you!"—a pleasant tribute to the profession. a few days later, on meeting him, he asked if i had found the rattlesnake—he had killed it under the sycamore and hung it on a branch for me to see.
as the memory of my morning rides down to the sycamore brings to mind the wonderful freshness of california's fog-cleared skies, so my sunset rides home from the great tree recall the peacefulness of the quiet valley at twilight. one sunset stands out with peculiar distinctness. as mountain billy turned from the sycamore marsh its leaning blades gleamed in the evening light, and the sun warmed the sides of the line of buff[122] guernseys wading in procession through the high swamp grass to their out-door milking stand. beyond, a load of hay was crossing the meadows with sun on the reins and the pitchforks the men carried over their shoulders; and beyond, at the head of the valley, the western canyons were filled with golden haze, while the last shafts of yellow light loitered over the apricot orchards below, where the tranquil birds were singing their evening songs. slowly the long shadows of the mountain crept over orchard and vineyard until, finally, the sun rounded the last peak and left our little valley in darkness.
