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"He doesn't think many worth caring for." "Indeed! And he is perfect, then, is he?" "He thinks he is nearly as bad as any; but that doesn't make the rest any better." "Poor old gentleman! He must have the blues dreadfully. What does he do with his birds? Eat his robins, and stuff his cats, and sell his red-birds in cages?"
"If we do not get them now, the time will pass. Lily's fingers, too, will pick them quicker than mine, so that we shall get double as many as I should get by myself," I observed. My arguments prevailed, and Lily and I set out, happy as the red-birds we saw flying in and out among the trees around us.
Accustomed to ramble about the woods without companionship, she walked leisurely along the rocky road, swinging the tin bucket in one hand, and pausing now and then to watch the shy red-birds that flitted like flame-jets in and out of the trees as she passed.
One phase of those days must by no means go unrecorded namely, the Broadway omnibuses, with their drivers. But the flush days of the old Broadway stages, characteristic and copious, are over. The Yellow-birds, the Red-birds, the original Broadway, the Fourth avenue, the Knickerbocker, and a dozen others of twenty or thirty years ago, are all gone.
Some of them were all over as white as swans, others as black as crows, many as grey as owls, others black and white like magpies, some all red like red-birds, and others purple and white like some pigeons. He called the males clerg-hawks, monk-hawks, priest-hawks, abbot-hawks, bish-hawks, cardin-hawks, and one pope-hawk, who is a species by himself.
It is like his house and yard and garden. What does he do?" "Whatever he pleases." "You must not be impertinent to me, or I'll tell him. What does he like?" "Birds red-birds. What do you like?" "Red-birds! How does he catch them? Throw salt on their tails?" "He is a lover of Nature, madam, and particularly of birds." "What does he know about birds? Doesn't he care for people?"
The trees always green, with which that noble river is shaded, the humming birds, the red-birds, the paroquets, the promerops, &c. who flitted among their long yielding branches, caused in us emotions difficult to express. We could not satiate our eyes with gazing on the beauties of this place, verdure being so enchanting to the sight, especially after having travelled through the Desert.
There were birds of sweet song and beautiful plumage ivory-bills, red-birds, and mocking-birds, green paroquets, and many others of the woodpecker tribe filling the forest with their various notes. We now felt sure that we were approaching the river; but again a faintness came over me, and I doubted very much whether I should reach it. Suddenly Tim exclaimed, "Hurrah!
"Not because you have bitten me, but because you will make it your business to come here and spring this trap every day. Red-birds and blue-jays are perfect nuisances when a fellow is trapping, and I wouldn't blame Dave for shooting every one he sees." But Don did not injure the bird. He was a sportsman, and never made war on game of this sort.
Rising to our feet, we lost no time in looking out for game. We saw several birds, green paroquets, woodpeckers, blue-birds, and red-birds; but we had frightened them from the spot where we had at first appeared. We accordingly made our way along the pool, Tim going in one direction, I in the other.