United States or South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The other two were Sir Salar Jung, Regent and Prime Minister, and the Wikar Shums Ool Umara. They were all relations of the Nizam. Here again was a beautiful palace in gardens, full of storks, pigeons, and other birds. Besides birds, there were flowers; and all the gardens and terraces were covered with honeysuckle. We inspected the town also, each riding on a separate elephant.
The prettiest little babies lie there dreaming more sweetly than they will ever dream in the time to come. All parents are glad to have a little child, and children are so pleased with a little brother or sister. Now we will fly to the pond and fetch a little baby for each of the children who did not sing that naughty song to make game of the storks."
But the Queen of the Year became more and more silent, and paler and paler. "It blows cold," she said, "and night brings damp mists. I long for the land of my childhood." And she saw the storks fly away, one and all; and she stretched forth her hands towards them. She looked up at the nests, which stood empty.
He had noticed cart wheels placed upon the roofs of Dutch cottages to entice storks to settle upon them; he had seen their huge nests, too, on many a thatched gable roof from Broek to The Hague. But it was winter now. The nests were empty.
The most beautiful picture of all was of a stork, high up in a tall pine tree, and the branches of the pine tree, and the cones, and the pine needles were most beautifully drawn; and there was a nest with young storks in it, and behind the stork and the nest and the tall pine the sun was blazing with all his rays.
The trees are about eighteen inches in diameter and thirty-five feet high; being in full foliage, their appearance from a distance is good, but on a closer approach the forest proves to be a desolate swamp, completely overflowed; a mass of fallen dead trees protruding from the stagnant waters, a solitary crane perched here and there upon the rotten boughs; floating water-plants massed together, and forming green swimming islands, hitched generally among the sunken trunks and branches; sometimes slowly descending with the sluggish stream, bearing, spectre-like, storks thus voyaging on nature's rafts from lands unknown.
The Dutch folk-lore tells of the tragedy of the stork colony away back in the fifteenth century which occurred during the breeding season. The town of Delft caught fire and when the older storks made ready for flight their offspring were too young to fly and too heavy to be carried, and rather than leave their young, the old birds went back to their nests and perished.
Obscure relatives, never seen at other times, who had given glass screens painted with storks and water-lilies, or silver hair-brushes or carriage-clocks, turned up, and were pushing at the church and cynical at the reception.
In this happy condition of things, winter had come and passed away, and spring, with its fresh green shoots and its blue sky, was gladdening the joyous inmates of the castle. Spring was in harmony with them, and they with spring. What wonder then, that its storks and swallows inspired them also with a desire to travel?
There are royal, white, and grey herons, flycatchers, and other shore birds, ducks, lavancos, crested cranes, sea-crows, eagles, eagle-owls, and other birds of prey, although none are used for hawking. There are jays and thrushes as in Espana, and white storks and cranes. They do not rear peacocks, rabbits, or hares, although they have tried to do so.
Word Of The Day