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In whatever way you walk, at whatever hour, the birds are sweetly calling in the way-side oleanders and the wild sage-bushes and the cedar-tops. They are mostly cat-birds, quite like our own; and bluebirds, but of a deeper blue than ours, and redbirds of as liquid a note, but not so varied, as that of the redbirds of our woods. How came they all here, seven hundred miles from any larger land?
Mew!" too, just like kitties. Oh, I tell you cat-birds are queer things! and how they do love cherries when they are ripe! Eh? "That is very good crying, birdies," said Uncle Wiggily, "and I think I'll give you something to eat, to pay for it." So he took out from his valise some peanuts, that Percival, the circus dog, had given him, and Uncle Wiggily fed them to the cat-bird and her kittie-birds.
Let me specially record the satisfaction of this current forenoon, so serene and primitive, so conventionally exceptional, natural. An hour or so after breakfast I wended my way down to the recesses of the aforesaid dell, which I and certain thrushes, cat-birds, &c., had all to ourselves. A light south-west wind was blowing through the tree-tops.
The world seemed full of young life. There were calves tethered in pleasant shady spots, and puppies and kittens adventuring from the door-ways. The trees were full of birds: bobolinks, and cat-birds, and yellow-hammers, and golden robins, and sometimes a thrush, for the afternoon was wearing late.
But by and by he discovers that somehow, he cannot surmise how, it must have been when his eyes were turned the other way, the scene is entirely changed, the maidens are all wedded, and even now the nests are being got ready. I watched a trio of cat-birds in a clump of alder bushes by the roadside; two males, almost as a matter of course, "paying attentions" to one female.
"Those people," continued he, "are mere Hottentots; a set of unenlightened miserable tories, who know nothing of the grounds of the war; nothing of the rights and blessings we are contending for; nor of the corruptions and cruelties of the British ministry; and are therefore just as ready to fall into their destructive jaws, as young cat-birds are to run into the mouth of a rattle-snake."
It was too late to deceive me, however, and I marked that tree as I passed, intent at the moment upon cat-birds. On returning, I stopped on the bank to look the tree over at my leisure, and there I soon saw, two feet from the top of the tallest upright branch and tightly clinging to it, a small cradle, gently rocking in the warm breeze. No one was at home, and I sat down to wait.
Again the scrub would rustle, as a fox crouched down to hide his skulking body from the strangers' sight. The cat-birds were calling their sad messages to each other among the maple leaves, and lively little chipmunks would utter their shrill piping sounds of warning to their friends as they started before the advance of the young explorers.
We caught sight, however, only of several birds, about the size of a thrush, flitting in and out among the branches, and stopping every now and then to look at us. As we passed on they followed, until we got close to the camp. We then called Lejoillie to come and see them. He at once pronounced them to be cat-birds.
So soon as little folk find their voices, whether their dress be feathers, or furs, or French cambric, they are sure to make themselves heard and seen. One morning, two or three weeks after I had given up the bluejay search, and consoled myself with looking after baby cat-birds and thrushes, I started out as usual for a walk.
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