United States or Sudan ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


Daisy walked on a few steps, and then stopped to say: "What does that bird mean by calling 'Hurry up, hurry up? He keeps flying before us, and looking back as if he wanted to show me something." "Let me hear what he says. I may be able to understand him, or the bob-o-link that swings on the alder by the brook." Wee listened a moment, while the birds twittered and chirped with all their hearts.

Then it would not be long before the snow banks in the gully were all melted, and the farmer would be fixing his fences and getting ready to turn his stock out to pasture, and the farmer's wife's celery plants, and all her other kinds of plants would be up, and Mister Swallow, and Mister Swift, and Mister Bob-o-link, and all the other Mister Birds and their wives would be coming back north, and it would be plain to everybody that Spring was here and that Summer was on the way.

Of course leave was readily granted, and the orator, gracefully rising and steadying himself on the sound leg, with the other a little drawn back, extended his right hand, and bowing all round began. "Dere is noting," he said, "so sweet as liberty. 'Tis dis dat make de eagle fedder light, and de bob-o-link sich a good singer.

Nobody ever drew from it, and from the howling of the wolves, the honking of the geese, the calls of the ducks, the strange cries of the cranes as they soared with motionless wings high overhead, or rowed their way on with long slow strokes of their great wings, or danced their strange reels and cotillions in the twilight; and from the myriad voices of curlew, plover, gopher, bob-o-link, meadowlark, dick-cissel, killdeer and the rest day-sounds and night-sounds, dawn-sounds and dusk-sounds more inspiration than did the stolid Dutch boy plodding west across Iowa that spring of 1855, with his fortune in his teams of cows, in the covered wagon they drew, and the deed to his farm in a flat packet of treasures in a little iron-bound trunk among them a rain-stained letter and a worn-out woman's shoe.

Mister Jim Crow was sitting on a fence stake listening to Mister Bob-o-link who was singing his Spingle, Spangle song, when he saw six robins dart into Robert Robin's basswood tree. "Some strange robins are in Robert Robin's tree!" he said to himself. "I had better go over and see where they came from, what they are going to do, and who they are!"

Winter held on tenaciously and mercilessly, but it has let go. The great sun is high on his northern journey, and the vegetation, and the bird-singing, and the loud frog- chorus, the tree budding and blowing, are all upon us; and the glorious grass super-best of earth's garniture with its ever-satisfying green. The king-birds have come, and the corn-planter, the scolding bob-o-link.

The writer evidently must have had in mind as a criterion some of our own or the English great feathered soloists. Certainly the African jungle seems to produce no individual performers as sustained as our own bob-o-link, our hermit thrush, or even our common robin. But the African birds are vocal enough, for all that. Some of them have a richness and depth of timbre perhaps unequalled elsewhere.

Winter held on tenaciously and mercilessly, but it has let go. The great sun is high on his northern journey, and the vegetation, and the bird-singing, and the loud frog- chorus, the tree budding and blowing, are all upon us; and the glorious grass super-best of earth's garniture with its ever-satisfying green. The king-birds have come, and the corn-planter, the scolding bob-o-link.

The warblers, the humming bird, the tanager, the bob-o-link, the ovenbird, the vireos, the chat, the red start, the oriole, the dickcissel, the black-billed cuckoo, all greeted their friends as numerously as ever.

See de grand bird how he wheel right about face up to de sun, and hear de moosic ob de merry little fellow! "Liberty, liberty, Berry nice to be free! Bob-o-link where he please, Fly in de apple trees, O, 'tis de Freedom note Guggle sweet in him troat! Jink-a-jink, jink-a-jink, Winky wink, winky wink, Ony tink, ony tink, How happy, Bob-o-link! Sweet! Sweet!