Читать книгу The Ipswich Sparrow and Its Summer Home - Jonathan Jr. Dwight - Страница 3

BY JONATHAN DWIGHT, JR., M. D.

Discovered among the sand-hills of Ipswich, Massachusetts, by Mr. C. J. Maynard, and the single specimen obtained by him December 4, 1868, wrongly identified as Baird’s Sparrow of the far West by no less eminent an authority than Professor S. F. Baird, the Ipswich Sparrow, for a long time after it was recognized as a new species, enjoyed a reputation for rarity which later observations have not sustained. Gradually the few energetic collectors who have cared to face the wintry winds that sweep the desolate stretches of low sand-hills fringing so much of our Atlantic coast, have proved the bird to be a regular migrant or winter visitor, found more or less abundantly from Maine to Georgia. For nearly sixteen years after its discovery there was no clue to its breeding haunts until, in 1884, a single summer specimen was obtained from Sable Island, Nova Scotia. Until ten years later no successful effort was made to solve the mystery shrouding the summer home of a shy and silent species that disappeared from our shores with the earliest breath of spring, not to return again before the frosts of autumn had browned the waving clumps of coarse grass where it makes its winter home. It was in the hope of reading some of the unturned pages of the life-history of this interesting Sparrow that I visited Sable Island during the summer of 1894. A long personal acquaintance with the bird, added to my recent observations, enables me to present a comprehensive account of a species which, a New England discovery itself, annually imitates the Pilgrim Fathers in landing on New England’s shores; and I am confident my brother ornithologists, of that part of the country at least, will feel a particular interest in the new facts I am able to present regarding a species so peculiarly their own.

Perhaps one of the most interesting results of my trip has been to establish the fact that the Ipswich Sparrow is resident on Sable Island the whole year round. Moreover, it is the only land bird that makes its nest there, being known as the ‘Gray Bird’ to the few inhabitants. As no other breeding grounds have ever been found (and careful search has been made by several observers), Sable Island may truly be called the home of the Ipswich Sparrow. Lying as it does far out in the ocean, nearly one hundred miles from the Nova Scotia coast, a landing upon it impracticable except in fine weather, and wrapped in impenetrable fog for weeks at a time, small wonder is it that this lonely sand-bank should have guarded its secrets for so many years. Now at last it has yielded them up, and the home life of the Ipswich Sparrow, its unknown song, its undiscovered nest and eggs, its undescribed fledgling plumage, are no longer matters of conjecture. It is my pleasant task in these pages to lay them before my readers, with some other new facts that came to my notice while exiled on the narrow strip of sand known as Sable Island. I reached there on the 28th of May, 1894, departing thence on the 14th of June. No one is allowed to land without a permit from the Dominion Government, but, thanks to kind and interested friends, this was obtained for me without the delays and red tape that are apt to discourage such efforts. From the Government officials with whom I came in contact I received every attention, and to the cordial hospitality of Mr. Robert J. Boutilier, especially, the superintendent of the life-saving service on the island, and his family I owe the great success of my expedition.

The only communication the island has with the mainland is by the Government steamer which at long and irregular intervals carries supplies thither for the seventeen men (several of them with families) who now look after the two lighthouses and four life-saving stations. The trip, if made from Halifax, usually occupies a whole day, but the boat may spend days or even weeks supplying the other lighthouses of the Nova Scotia (or occasionally the Newfoundland) coast before it proceeds to Sable Island. The frequent fogs and the impossibility of making a landing unless the wind is in the right quarter, are other sources of delay and danger in visiting the place, and to accomplish it an unlimited amount of time and patience must be at one’s disposal. The voyages to and from the island actually occupied me six days, two of which were spent at anchor in the fog. As I went off in the first boat that had visited the island in five months I confess to some misgivings when the steamer left me, as to how long I might be obliged to play Robinson Crusoe. Like that gentleman I swept up the beach on the crest of a breaker, but I had the advantage of him in being comfortably seated in a surf boat. The cordiality of my reception quickly dispelled all doubts as to my surviving for an indefinite period, and when I left the island it was with regret, for everybody seemed to take an interest in my researches, and no sooner was a nest found or a bird caught than the intelligence came to me over the telephone wires that connect the different stations, and some of the domesticated wild ponies were ready in the barns to transport me wherever I wished to go.

When everything is taken into consideration, I am convinced that the Fates were unusually propitious, and enabled me to accomplish within a few weeks what might easily have taken as many months. No steamer visited the island for two months after I left it, and this impossibility of escape from a place that has absolutely no other means of communication with the outer world (not even a cable) is a serious bar to making a journey that lands the rash naturalist on a veritable terra incognita.

In order that we may better understand the conditions under which the birds are living there today, it will be interesting for us to glance at the history of this isolated spot, already the theme of many a pen, and important for us to dwell at some length upon the natural history, about which little has been written.