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Nearer the 'city' lies the deep little bight called Susan or Sawpit Bay. It is also known as Destruction Bay a gloomy name where ships caught carrying 'bales, or 'dry goods, or 'blackbirds, were broken up. Twenty years ago traces of their ruins were still seen. Susan is now provided with a large factory: here 'factories' do not manufacture.
I do not think its numbers are much increased at any time of year by migrants, though a few foreigners may arrive in the autumn, at which time of year considerable numbers of Mistletoe Thrushes are brought into the Guernsey market, where they may be seen hanging in bunches with Common Thrushes, Redwings, Blackbirds, Fieldfares, Starlings, and an occasional Ring Ouzel.
The blue jays were busy in the fields of wheat; so were the red-winged blackbirds, and the sparrows, and many other birds, great and small; field-mice in dozens were cutting the straw with their sharp teeth, and carrying off the grain to their nests; and as to the squirrels and chitmunks, there were scores of them black, red, and gray filling their cheeks with the grain, and laying it out on the rail fences and on the top of the stumps to dry, before they carried it away to their storehouses.
No hint of migration has yet passed over the land, and the quiet of summer still reigns; but even as we say this a confused chuckling is heard; this rises into a clatter of harsh voices, and a small flock of blackbirds two or three families pass overhead. The die is cast!
But while he carried me he whistled a lively air, and broke off to promise me good shooting before a month was out shooting of blackbirds, of deer perhaps, perhaps even of a mufro. Here the whistling grew largo espressivo.
He shoved it inside the breast of his hunting-shirt, cocked his rifle, and tapped Beacraft on the arm. So they marched away across the sunlit pasture, where blackbirds walked among the cattle, and the dew sparkled in tinted drops of fire. In all my horror of the man I pitied him, for I knew he was going to his death, there through the fresh, sweet morning, under the blue heavens.
You shall hear of all these, and learn where each one lives, in the bird stories I am going to write for you. But now let us go down by the river and see what some of these newly arrived birds are doing after their long journey. "Hark! I hear the notes of a Thrasher in those bushes, and the Red-winged Blackbirds are calling all through the marsh meadow.
What possessed her to indulge in such a performance in the sight of the sparrows, blackbirds, and unperceived farmer who were alone its spectators, whether the smile began as a factitious one, to test her capacity in that art, nobody knows; it ended certainly in a real smile. She blushed at herself, and seeing her reflection blush, blushed the more.
We began in April when the winds sang as they did in March. There were blackbirds around then and that bird that sings "spring day." Mitch's father knew the names of all the birds; but outside of crows, robins, jay-birds and things like that we didn't know 'em neither Mitch nor I. We didn't care, for what's the use of knowing names of things?
This one thrush did, indeed, by some exceptional fortune, survive; but where were the family of thrushes that had sung so sweetly in the rainy autumn? Where were the blackbirds?
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