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In this habit he resembles the Wren. While we are watching his motions, he pauses in his song, and utters that peculiar note of complaint from which he has derived his name, Chewink, though the sound he utters is more like chewee, accenting the second syllable.
There wasa chewink in the Stanley woods, that brought off a brood of four, under the safe shelter of a rank thistle leaf, in the midst of trampling herds of cattle driven wild by flies. There was a ground sparrow near the Hale sand pit, covered by a base leaf of another thistle, and beneath a third on Bob's lease, I had made a study of an exquisite nest.
The birds that come in March, as the bluebird, the robin, the song sparrow, the starling, build in April; the April birds, such as the brown thrasher, the barn swallow, the chewink, the water-thrush, the oven-bird, the chippy, the high-hole, the meadowlark, build in May, while the May birds, the kingbird, the wood thrush, the oriole, the orchard starling, and the warblers, build in June.
On the third or fourth of May I saw a loon in the pond, and during the first week of the month I heard the whip-poor-will, the brown thrasher, the veery, the wood pewee, the chewink, and other birds. I had heard the wood thrush long before.
Before the question had been asked and answered a half dozen times a catbird intruded its voice and hearing a reply came through the bushes to investigate. A wren followed and became very saucy. From one could not see where, came a vireo, and almost at the same time a chewink had something to say. Instantly the Harvester answered.
I really can't afford to lose my fur. It's all the protection I have from the rain, and when winter comes I'll need it to keep me warm." "But a few hairs to line my nest with won't hurt you," pleaded Mrs. Phœbe Bird. "No," replied Bumper firmly, "if I let you have some I must do the same to all the others, and I don't want to offend Towhee the Chewink or Mr.
Or the phbe-bird, with her sweet April call and mossy nest under the bridge or woodshed, or under the shelving rocks; or the brown thrasher mocking thrush calling half furtively, half archly from the treetop back in the bushy pastures: "Croquet, croquet, hit it, hit it, come to me, come to me, tight it, tight it, you're out, you're out," with many musical interludes; or the chewink, rustling the leaves and peering under the bushes at you; or the pretty little oven-bird, walking round and round you in the woods, or suddenly soaring above the treetops, and uttering its wild lyrical strain; or, farther south, the whistling redbird, with his crest and military bearing, these and many others should be full of suggestion and inspiration to our poets.
The chewink in his harlequin suit of black, white, and chestnut varies his sharp and cheerful "Chewink" with a musical little strain, "Do-fah, fah-fah-fah-fah," and one of the white-throated sparrows now and then stops feeding and flies up to a hazel twig to give his sweet and plaintive little "pea-a-body, peabody, peabody."
"What have you wondered about me?" asked Chewink. "I've wondered what family you belong to," replied Peter. Chewink chuckled. "I belong to a big family," said he. "I belong to the biggest family among the birds. It is the Finch and Sparrow family. There are a lot of us and a good many of us don't look much alike, but still we belong to the same family.
Her two tiny eggs have since been safely hatched and the young birds reared; now the nest is empty, a prize to be taken and preserved for future study and admiration. At the foot of a figwort stalk in the pasture, shielded by a little sprig of choke-cherry and a wisp of grasses, a new nest is being builded. That is why the chewink sings so happily from dawn till dark.
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