United States or Barbados ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
But I am making slow headway toward finding the birds'-nests, for I had set out on this occasion in hopes of finding a rare nest, the nest of the black-throated blue-backed warbler, which, it seemed, with one or two others, was still wanting to make the history of our warblers complete.
A fast runner was Mr Wagtail, and fine fun it was to see him skimming along the top of the ground in chase of a fly to take home to his wife, who used to live in a nest in the bank close by the hole over the pond, where old Ogrebones blue-backed Billy the kingfisher, had his house, and used to spread the bones of his fishy little victims about the grass.
His whole name is or was till lately black-throated blue-backed warbler, or Dendroica coerulescens, and that being fairly set down for future reference for whom it may concern, I shall call him henceforth, as we did in the woods, the blue. For a day or two at first he was to us, like many another of his size, only a "wandering voice."
The warden sat rotund and impressive, in a swivel chair, holding in his hands a folded-up, blue-backed document. "Dugmore," he said in his best official manner, "when His Excellency, Governor Woodford, was here on Sunday he took notice that your general health was not good. So, of his own accord, he has sent you an unconditional pardon for a Christmas gift, and here it is."
There were the tell-tale compass, the sea-lamps in their gimbals, the blue-backed charts carelessly rolled and tucked away, the signal-flags in alphabetical order, and a mariner's dividers jammed into the woodwork to hold a calendar. At last I was living. Here I sat, inside my first ship, a smuggler, accepted as a comrade by a harpooner and a runaway English sailor who said his name was Scotty.
Rynch chewed that over, came up with the obvious explanation. "All right so then maybe our blue-backed friends are imported. Suppose someone's running a private business of his own here and wants to get rid of visitors?" Hume looked thoughtful. "No." He did not enlarge upon his negative.
The work of instruction was simple enough, for most of the pupils began with the alphabet, which they acquired from Webster's blue-backed spelling-book, the palladium of Southern education at that epoch.
They could name every rope and clew, every brace and stay on a pink or Chebacco boat before they reached words of two syllables in Webster's blue-backed spelling-book; the mysteries of trawls and handlines, of baits and hooks were unraveled to them while still in the nursery, and the songs that lulled them to sleep were often doleful ditties of castaways on George's Bank.
Morritt, writing to Scott in March, 1815, hopes he will "restore pure narrative to the dignity from which it gradually slipped before it dwindled into a manufactory for the circulating library." "Waverley," he asserted, "would prevail over people otherwise averse to blue-backed volumes." Thus it was an unconsidered art which Scott took up and revived.
Our winter birds go in flocks, and where we see a brown creeper we are almost sure to find other birds. Nuthatches are those blue-backed, white or rufous breasted little climbers who spend their lives defying the law of gravity.
Word Of The Day