The Grouse had fluttered to the top of a log for some termites. On the other side she discovered the hen with her fledglings. The speckled balls trailed about their mother as closely as if they were attached to the ends of her feathers. Down the shadow of the log moved the family. The Grouse watched them go, then turned to a flat granite rock, circled by brush, where she usually stopped to rest her leg.
The mid-morning sun had made the rock comforting to a bird’s flesh. The Grouse let herself down upon it and soon felt the heat beginning to come through her feathers. She lay tilted, with her injured leg in the sun, and expanded her tail and wings so that the heat could sink into the muscles and spread the oil that lubricated the feathers.
Enclosed by the brush, the Grouse was hidden from any animal passing on foot, but she could be seen from the branches of surrounding trees. She had relaxed in the warmth, and her eyes were partly closed, when, starting slowly, the air began to vibrate with a rhythm that was half sound, half pulsation. There were six deep muffled beats, followed by silence — silence except for a grasshopper’s brittle click. The Grouse listened to the hopper, waiting to hear the low, slow tones again. A chickadee called and a robin chirped. Perhaps the Grouse only had dreamed the disturbing rhythm. No, it had begun again. It was beating for her, as she knew. A male grouse in a ponderosa pine had seen her and was calling to her.
This probably was the wildest of all forest voices. Its resonance did not even come from the male bird’s throat, but from his flesh, tightened over expanded air sacs. The sound was so intangible that one must listen with nerves as well as ears to hear it. Each cadence of beats was like a thought, a wish, expressed only for the Grouse. The cock even used ventriloquism to hide his whereabouts from most listeners.
The Grouse seemed no longer at peace on her sunny rock. She moved out from the brush, ran a few steps to gain speed, then rose on her whirring wings and flew to a sugar pine. The cock could see her there, too, and continued his calling. She walked to the end of a branch, came back and settled restlessly near the trunk. She preened the feathers of a wing. She fluttered to a higher branch and turned so that she faced the gorge instead of the slope.
Now instead of the gullies she had passed, the Grouse saw canyons cutting mountain ranges; instead of boulders, granite cliffs; instead of leaves above her, thunderheads with blue shadows. A world that expanded infinitely lay around her, and in the calls another world that might expand.
She flew again, passing the male’s tree. She could see him clearly. He was the finest cock in her covey. Weeks earlier, he had fought with another male, hoping to please the hen that the Grouse had met with the chicks. He had won the fight, too, but the hen had chosen the loser, as female grouse so often curiously do. The most impressive cock in the grouse community was single this year, as was the hen with the injured leg.
But now her injury was almost well. The cock must have realized that it was, for he was putting all his talent into the serenade. As the Grouse approached, he lowered his head, inflated the sides of his throat, and with an effort that seemed to take his entire strength, forced out the air in the rhythmic beats. Before the last short beat, the Grouse had alighted in an oak tree.
Although she was farther away now, the cock continued to call. But a new sound conflicted with his message. Somewhere up the slope a human being was chopping wood. The sound was deliberate and steady, plainly driven by a mental will, not the free wish of an instinct. The strokes of the ax broke through the bird’s wild magic. In any case, could the cock’s hope be fulfilled with the year so far along? If the Grouse responded now, would she not come to a day when she would be mothering a late brood of chicks, too young for the autumn migration? The problem could hardly have been so definite to her, but her instincts, or some inarticulate part of her nature, would weigh it and give her the right reaction.
Directly above the tree that the Grouse now had reached, stood Beetle Rock. To get up over the lofty wall would have been difficult for her, on either feet or wings, but along the north side of the Rock was the draw that now sucked up some of the canyon breeze. The Grouse launched herself into this current and let it carry her to the Rock’s upper edge.
She alighted in the fir that would be her headquarters for the rest of the day. Beneath its branches was a sheltered lookout where various animals gathered to rest, to enjoy the filtered sunlight, to take dust baths, and watch the doings on the Rock. The Grouse’s friend, the Deer, came there to chew his cuds. A golden-mantled squirrel had its burrow among the roots of the fir, and pairs of juncos, chipmunks, and lizards lived near. They formed a little neighborhood in the larger Beetle Rock community.
This day the Grouse stayed for a while in the branches, for rain had started to fall as she was flying from the slope, and her weather sense told her that there would be more of it. She crouched on a bough close to the trunk and drew her head into her shoulders. Sheets of water soon were blowing over the Rock, lightning was streaking above it and thunder was hurling crashes upon it, but the Grouse was as snug on her perch as if she were in a feather cocoon.
As soon as the storm was on its way down the mountain, she prepared to come out of the tree. The ground near the trunk had remained dry, but at the edge of the branches’ canopy, enough moisture had fallen to bring appetizing bugs and other insects to the surface. The Grouse tilted forward and started to raise her wings for the drop. She looked down to choose the place for landing — and saw an immense fur back beneath her. Her toes tightened to hold her on the bough, and habit kept her quiet. But her eyes, wide and hard, revealed that terror had possessed her. The animal she saw was the Coyote who had caught her leg. He could not reach her in the tree, but the unexpected sight of him was a shock.
He was not aware of the Grouse. He had trotted out of the thicket and passed under the fir on his way towards the draw. The Grouse saw him sniff around the manzanita and wild lilac bushes, pausing from time to time with his eyes on the burrow holes of squirrels and chipmunks. Suddenly, as if he had caught a clear scent, he bounded under an oak tree, where the family of weasels had their home. From a distance the Grouse could see him digging to the nest, perhaps to the young, for now the cries of the mother were shrill.
As the Grouse had been watching the Coyote, the Mule Deer Buck had come. He stood under the fir, also with his eyes on the Coyote, and fairly quivering with alarm. A ground squirrel was whistling its warning; at a hole in the fir trunk appeared the face of a wakened flying squirrel; the Deer Mouse ran up the tree in a panic and took refuge with the squirrel. Fear circled out from the Coyote, spread from one little life to another so far that many trembled without knowing the danger.
What the Coyote found in the burrow could not be seen from the fir, but the screams of the mother Weasel expressed a desperate grief. In many such incidents she had played the Coyote’s part, yet she was able to sound more outraged now than most gentler animals could have done. The frightfulness could not last indefinitely. Finally the Coyote loped down off the Rock. The Weasel was silent; the other animals abandoned their defenses.
But the Coyote left a tension that broke out in many small conflicts. First to show it was the Buck. A nervous yearling doe had come beneath the tree. The Buck was browsing on twig-ends of the lower branches, trying not to let them touch his tender growing antlers. The doe kept getting in his way, prancing, whirling her ears at imagined threats. The nearest danger, the Buck’s annoyance, she did not sense.
The Grouse did not react with stillness to any disturbance in which she was not involved. She had come down from the tree and now got away quickly, on toes and wings, feathers bristling and tail upspread. She went down to a hollow in the Rock where pollen cones from a Jeffrey pine had blown. These were her favorite food; she would quiet herself by picking them up, one by one.
Soon the doe raced by with blood on her shoulder. The Grouse stopped eating and watched her disappear, then turned back to the pollen. But she found herself in another skirmish. The Lizard had trespassed
on the hollow. Another lizard, owner of the hollow, must drive him out. As the two flashed and darted around the Grouse, she fled again, circling into the trees behind the Rock.
When she returned to the fir lookout she found the tempers at a climax. The Buck was walking around a coral king snake that lay coiled near the tree. Every watching animal was tense. The Buck’s strained gait, and the menacing thrust of his head, showed that his fury could not be controlled much longer. Yet he continued to move around the snake, and the tension increased. Finally, with a swift leap in the air, he crashed upon his victim, his sharp hoofs together. Again and again he sprang upon it, until his strength was gone. Then he came back under the fir.
This time the Grouse had stayed. Now, choosing a spot where the tree’s broken shadows resembled her markings, she folded her feet and lay upon the fallen needles. The breeze still blew from the draw, but she partly raised her feathers, allowing the downy after-shafts to fluff out and enclose her in warmth. The anger visibly went out of the Buck. A cud rolled up the front of his throat. He chewed it, at first with frequent pauses to concentrate on suspicious scents or sounds, then more steadily. Finally he knelt with one foreleg and the other, and lay down.
Many of the animals were sleeping, though not all. Around the Grouse and the Buck moved the golden-mantled squirrel, walking on its hind legs to reach for seeds in scattered heads of grass. From a cherry bush near, the junco tinkled a tiny gold song, and a mountain swallowtail fluttered by, bent on its delicate business. The Buck watched the happenings around him, gravely, but the Grouse seemed to turn to shy impressions of her own. In her eyes was an expression, liquid and remote, as if she were hearing bird or insect music pitched too high for many ears, or perhaps, most likely, she merely was feeling an exquisite inner balance related to the balance in her motions.
But the chance to be serene soon ended. The Grouse’s very gentleness sometimes tempted animals to tease her. Towards mid-afternoon she felt inclined to take a dust bath. She pushed herself into the sun-warmed crumble of bark and needles. With her beak she threw some of the dust into the down of her breast, she rubbed the feathers of her neck and head into it, and with her feet she tossed it upon her back and under each wing. When she would shake it out, she would leave enough dust at the base of her feathers to smother the mites on her skin.
While her plumage was still ruffled out, the Grouse heard the Chickaree’s squeals in the fir. The next instant he was down the tree and bounding around her. His rushes were a bewildering whirl of flying tail and pattering feet, and he barked, whistled, and growled at her.
The Grouse did not give him the satisfaction of a glance. Now she repeated the entire process of dusting, deliberately. Her unconcern infuriated the squirrel. He was coming in under her very beak; it really seemed likely that he would nip at her. She waited until he was racing towards her once more, then threw herself into a fine flutter. Dust flew all over him. She spread her tail, jumped up and down and hissed a terrible, if indefinite, threat. Part of the splendid display of rage was wasted, however, for the Chickaree already had fled up the tree.
The Grouse had begun to compose herself when the cry of a hawk tore over the Rock. Before it had ended, the Grouse was under the cherry bush, as quiet as if the cry had struck out her life.
The Chickaree no longer seemed important. A hawk was danger in its most desperate form. Even if the Grouse should get off quickly on her wings, she could not be sure of escaping another bird. The grip of a wildcat would have had at least the numbing quality of strangeness; most to be dreaded was the threat of a bird’s claws and beak, like the Grouse’s own but with sharp destruction flowing out of them. Again, from the tree next to the roosting pine, came the hawk’s threat. Doubtless its eyes were scanning every break in the Rock, every bough of the trees, every sheltering bush. Could it miss the Grouse, so imperfectly hidden in the thin shade of the cherry? Once more the pitiless cry penetrated all the hiding places, as if aiding the search.
No other sounds told what became of the enemy. Time simply passed. While the Grouse stood motionless, the shadow of a branch on the ground moved from the right of her to the left. A little cloud that had been above the western ridge vanished below it. The petals of a lily partly closed. Even after the chipmunks were chasing each other again, and a pair of olive-sided flycatchers were bickering around their high nest, the Grouse remained still. But finally her eyes shifted to the Buck, who was standing now. As if his size and strength gave her confidence, she stepped under a pine seedling and began clipping off the needle tips.
But the Buck soon left. Another companion of his, a younger deer, appeared from among the trees and the two went away to browse in the oak thickets. The Grouse strolled to a rain pool where a robin and the Jay were battling to decide which should drink first. The Grouse was a more forceful bird than either. She did not fight for her place at the water; she stepped forward and took it.
The day seemed to be coming to a thin and scattered end. The sun had lost most of its warmth and had not yet grown warm in color. The storm had stiffened the Grouse’s leg. The cock had not followed her to the Rock, and most of her neighbors had disappeared. She was hungry; at least she could do something about that. She went back to the pollen cones on the Rock. It was important to start the night with a crop full of nourishment; here she could find it with little walking.
Looking up, she saw the Buck browsing on the brush in a granite gully. And gradually other animals came out to seek the insects, seeds, leaves, or whatever food would sustain them until morning. A sociable sort of activity was beginning again, when the Grouse noticed that the eyes of the Deer were tense with surprise. She looked to see what had startled him. It was the cock, spectacular in his courtship display, assumed for her. To have him appear so abruptly startled the Grouse, too. The feathers on her head rose nervously, and she took a few quick steps towards the trees.
Perhaps the Buck had not even recognized the cock. Ordinarily he was a rather formless bird, darker and with fewer markings than a female grouse. Now all his outlines had become sharp, and his soot-colored feathers had parted to show a brilliant pattern of black and white and flame. On each side of his throat swelled the sac of vivid yellow skin, surrounded with a flat wreath of black and white feathers. Above his eyes had risen orange crests. His tail was a light-bordered fan spread above his back, its reverse side a pompom of black and white down. And the bird’s manner, too, was striking. He advanced with a slow, bowing step, dragging his wings on the ground and dipping his head from side to side.
Other creatures besides the Deer had paused to watch the cock. The Grouse led him away to a small clearing in the forest behind the roosting pine. The clearing was familiar to all the covey, but on this evening it was like a new place, for it was in a stage of lovely flowering. A mist of tiny pink gilia blossoms floated just above the ground, and bright little birds, chickadees, kinglets, and hummers, flowed around the twig-ends of the trees. But the most exquisite transformation had been made by the tussock-moth caterpillars. After hatching in the boughs of the firs, they had let themselves down to earth on long silken threads, which still hung in the air, glistening in the late sun’s light.
Back and forth across the clearing walked the two birds, sometimes under the open sky, sometimes in and out of the bordering shadows. The Grouse was a few steps ahead, not leading now, but delicately fleeing. Whenever the cock paused, she would wait, and both would fall into their sensitive stillness. But she could always perceive the movements of the cock as he started forward again, and she would slip farther away, as if his emotion were a wave that pushed her out of his reach.
Occasionally the cock beat one note of his call; more often he urged her in a low tone, hoarse and compelling. Each time she heard it she lengthened the space between them. She must avoid anything impetuous until her own wish spoke more definitely. If she had had the most analytical human intelligence, it could not have told when the autumn storms would begin — whether a nestful of eggs coul
d safely be laid after June eighteenth. But the schedule that intelligence could not have guessed, the more elementary impulse of the Grouse would know. She was feeling for its decision while the cock was pleading. He seemed to insist that the question be settled now. And yet she was not sure. Once more she started to the other side of the clearing. On the way she realized that he no longer called her, and she looked around. He was not there.
Soon she heard the whirring of his wings. He might have gone up into the covey’s roosting pine, which lately she had been occupying alone … but the whirring faded slowly; his flight was a longer one. Soon the Grouse discovered where he was: in a tree at the rim of the Rock. He had begun the rhythmical beating for her. He might yet return to the pine. It was the custom of all the grouse to go into the roosting tree in a ceremonious way. They first walked to the top of a massive boulder and from there fluttered to the lowest branch of a cedar. They rose through this tree, branch by branch, until they were level with a long bough of their pine. Finally they flew across the space between and moved in a procession to the top. No doubt the cock was watching to see the Grouse begin that ascent. It was not unlikely that he would fly back over the Rock later, and join her on the roost.
The sun was nearly ready to set, and dusk had gathered in the clearing where the Grouse stood motionless among the little flowers. Moths, like ghosts of butterflies, were beginning to cross from tree to tree. The Grouse’s wings came together above her back, lowered with the lightest possible stroke, and lifted her to a low bough, not of the roosting pine, but of a fir behind the clearing. She moved in along the branch towards the trunk. With one soft flutter she alighted on the next higher bough. By walking part way to the end, she came close to the branch above. Feeling her way, with never an awkward step, she climbed, her pace becoming slower. Near the top it was timed with the sun. As the sun only apparently moved when its edge was observed against something still, so the breast of the Grouse seemed stationary until it passed a twig. At last she reached the highest branch that she could clasp securely. She balanced her weight and let herself down on the bough. The clusters of needles hid her, but through them she could look out and see the narrow glow on one side of the sky, and the stars on the other side.
One Day On Beetle Rock Page 4
