One of the best of November's surprises may come when all hope of late migrants has been given up. Walking near the river, our glance falls on what might be a painter's palate with blended colours of all shades resting on the smooth surface of the water. We look again and again, hardly believing our eyes, until at last the gorgeous creature takes to wing, and goes humming down the stream, a bit of colour tropical in its extravagance--and we know that we have seen a male wood, or summer, duck in the full grandeur of his white, purple, chestnut, black, blue, and brown. Many other ducks have departed, but this one still swims among the floating leaves on secluded waterways.
Now is the time when the woodcock rises from his swampy summer home and zigzags his way to a land where earthworms are still active. Sometimes in our walks we may find the fresh body of one of these birds, and an upward glance at the roadside will show the cause--the cruel telegraph wires against which the flight of the bird has carried it with fatal velocity.
One of the greatest pleasures which November has to give us is the joy of watching for the long lines of wild geese from the Canada lakes. Who can help being thrilled at the sight of these strong-winged birds, as the V-shaped flock throbs into view high in air, beating over land and water, forest and city, as surely and steadily as the passing of the day behind them. One of the finest of November sounds is the "Honk! honk!" which comes to our ears from such a company of geese,--musical tones "like a clanking chain drawn through the heavy air."
At the stroke of midnight I have been halted in my hurried walk by these notes. They are a bit of the wild north which may even enter within a city, and three years ago I trapped a fine gander and a half a dozen of his flock in the New York Zoological Park, where they have lived ever since and reared their golden-hued goslings, which otherwise would have broken their shells on some Arctic waste, with only the snowbirds to admire, and to be watched with greedy eyes by the Arctic owls.
A haze on the far horizon, The infinite tender sky, The ripe, rich tints of the cornfields, And the wild geese sailing high; And ever on upland and lowland, The charm of the goldenrod-- Some of us call it Autumn, And others call it God. W. H. Carruth.