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At the first notes she lifted up her queenly head and stood, listening and appreciative. Then he saw her rounded throat swelling like a bird's, and the rich, full tones of her voice rang out through the welcoming sunshine, and the fluttering wrens, and proud red-breasted robins, and rival song-queens, the brown-winged thrushes, even the impudent shrieking jays, seemed to hush and listen.
Brown-winged terns occupied cool nooks and crannies in the rocks, and other species of terns had egg reserves they cannot be called nests on the unshaded coral bank.
At the foot of the incline lay the Yellow Hole, gleaming and glancing in the sunshine; all around and about us were the bush creatures, rustling in the scrub and grasses flies were conspicuous by their absence, here and there shafts of sunlight lay across the gray-brown shade; in the distance the grazing cattle moved among the timber; away out in the glorious sunshine, beyond and above the tree-tops, brown-winged, slender Bromli kites wheeled and circled and hovered and swooped; and lounging in the sun-flecked shade, well satisfied with our lot, we looked out into the blue, sunny depths, each one of us the embodiment of lazy contentment, and agreeing with Dan that "Sunday wasn't a bad institution for them as had no objection to doing a loaf now and then."
On a neighbouring island of the same group unstocked with goats, no change in the habits of the birds has taken place. Among the rocks of Purtaboi, in cool dark grottoes, the brown-winged tern rears her young. She often permits herself to be trapped rather than indicate her presence by voluntary flight. One of the most graceful of the sea-swallows this.
A frightened owl, I remember, was routed by the tumult from its sleepy perch, and flew slowly over the open space of the ravine. So curious a compound is man! we watched the great brown-winged creature flap its purblind way across from wood to wood, and speculated there, as we stood in the jaws of death, if some random ball would hit it!
After they are fully ripe, they spread their shell-like scales and allow the brown-winged seeds to fly in the mellow air, while the empty cones remain to beautify the tree until the coming of a fresh crop. The staminate cones of all the coniferae are beautiful, growing in bright clusters, yellow, and rose, and crimson.
At this psychological moment I heard behind me a voice of hope, the song of a grasshopper: not one of those fat-legged, green-winged imbeciles that feebly tumble in the summer fields, but a game grasshopper, one of those thin-shanked, brown-winged fellows that leap like kangaroos, and fly like birds, and sing KRI-KAREE-KAREE-KRI in their flight.
Out through the portals of the Golden Gate they sail, like brown-winged pelicans, to drop their nets and cast their lines into the mighty deep; but these picturesque boats are fast giving way to more modern conveyances, and the fussy motorboat, that is not dependent upon wind or tide, will soon relegate the lateen sail to total obscurity.
But just as it was beginning fairly to burn its way into his flesh, a queer little rushing sound close at his side brought his heart into his throat. It was such a vicious, menacing little sound. Glancing down, he saw that a tiny wood-mouse had darted upon a big brown-winged butterfly and captured it.
On the opposite side, lifted high above the surrounding country, lay the carriage road on top of the great dike built to keep the Haarlem Lake within bounds; stretching out far in the distance, until it became lost in a point, was the glassy canal with its many skaters, its brown-winged iceboats, its push-chairs, and its queer little sleds, light as cork, flying over the ice by means of iron-pronged sticks in the hands of the riders.
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