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The far left invites one to a wild tangle of fallen trees and undergrowth, where veeries sing, and enchanting but maddening warblers lure the bird-lover on, to scramble over logs, wade into swamps, push through chaotic masses of branches, and, while using both hands to make her way, incidentally offer herself a victim to the thirsty inhabitants whose stronghold it is.
The Persian poets tell of the passionate love of the nightingale for the scented rose, and in fanciful figure of speech make the full-blossomed flower complain of too much kissing from its bird-lover, so that its sweetness goes, and its beauty fades far too sadly soon.
I do not think that the chances are one in fifty that the hoof of a cow will find it. I do not suppose that the problem presented itself to the bird as it does to me, but her instinct was as sure a guide as my reason is to me or a surer one. The vesper sparrow was thus happily named by a New England bird-lover, Wilson Flagg, an old-fashioned writer on our birds, fifty or more years ago.
A bird-lover, some time since, reported how a pair of sparrows had started to build a nest upon his lawn. He, wishing to interfere with the process, took a small rifle and shot the male bird. Within twenty minutes the female, who had scouted round the neighborhood, returned with another mate and resumed her nest-building process.
"It is now more than forty years that I have paid some attention to the ornithology of this district, without being able to exhaust the subject," says Gilbert White; "new occurrences still arise as long as any inquiries are kept alive." A happy man is the bird-lover; always another species to look for, another mystery to solve.
He talked with such enthusiasm that McLean never took his eyes from his face or shifted in the saddle until he described the strange bird-lover, and then the Boss suddenly bent over the pommel and laughed with the boy. Freckles decorated his story with keen appreciation and rare touches of Irish wit and drollery that made it most interesting as well as very funny.
In due time he ran down to the little brook before the door, and then started out, evidently after something to eat; and he went nosing about on the ground with a thoroughness to make a bird-lover shudder, for what ground bird's nest could escape him! I recognize the fact that, from his point of view, chipmunks must live, and why should they not have eggs for breakfast?
A city woman who had spent much of her time in the country once asked a well-known ornithologist to take her where she could hear the bluebird. "What, never heard the bluebird!" said he. "I have not," said the woman. "Then you will never hear it," said the bird-lover; never hear it with that inward ear that gives beauty and meaning to the note.
A crow parent on a foraging expedition is a most unwelcome visitor to the farmer with young chickens, or the bird-lover interested in the fate of nestlings.
The single-file procession through the charming wood paths consisted of our host as protector on the return in the dark, the big dog his mistress's body-guard his mistress, an enthusiastic bird-lover, and myself.
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