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He did not merely "reside" in it; he was part of it, and it was part of him. He fitted into it as one of its native denizens, like the hedgehogs and the thrushes. All that happened to it mattered to him. He learnt to look with reverence upon its main features, and would not willingly interfere with their disposition.
They were further advanced than he, for while they scrambled from the nest, he could do nothing but snuggle close on the bottom of the cup. A wood thrush's nest that I found contained two young thrushes and two buntings. All of them were about half fledged. Being of nearly the same size, the queerly assorted bantlings lived in apparent peace in their narrow quarters.
Their redstart also builds under the eaves of houses; their starling in church steeples and in holes in walls; several thrushes resort to sheds to nest; and jackdaws breed in the crannies of the old architecture, and this in a much milder climate than our own. They have in that country no birds that answer to our tiny, lisping wood-warblers, genus Dendroica, nor to our vireos, Vireonidoe.
The thrushes and the rest of the bill of fare, bacon, sweet nut-flavoured oil, bread, and the cheap wine of the Campagna were not unwelcome, though Phaon cursed the coarse food roundly.
It is situated in a short and rather narrow street, leading from an omnibus route running north from the city to nowhere in particular or, if particulars must be given, to that complicated assemblage of carts, cabs, and clothes-lines; of manure heaps and disorganised pumps; of caged thrushes, blackbirds, and magpies; of dead dogs and cats, and colonies of thriving rats; of imprisoned terriers and goats let out on parole; of shrill and angry maternity and mud-loving infancy; and of hissing, curry-combing grooms and haltered horses, to which Londoners have given the designation of a Mews.
Of course the strictly sylvan birds, such as the warblers, the vireos, the oven-bird, the veery and hermit thrushes, do not come, but many kinds of other birds pause there during the day and seem to enjoy the unobstructed view. All the field and orchard and grove birds come.
Redwing thrushes threaten with the "whip" those who advance towards them; they spend much of the day in the elm-tops. Thick tussocks of old grass are conspicuous at the skirt of a hedge; half green, half grey, they contrast with the bare thorn.
Hence we can understand, bearing in mind that each organic being is trying to live wherever it can live, how it has arisen that there are upland geese with webbed feet, ground woodpeckers, diving thrushes, and petrels with the habits of auks.
Since I knew this, the last owner of my farm has become very real to me, and I thought of her that day a great deal, and could almost see her as she sat alone on her door-step in the twilight of a summer evening, when the thrushes were calling in the woods; or going down the hills to church, dressed in quaint fashion, with a little sadness in her face as she thought of her lost companions and how she did not use to go to church alone.
The sun rose higher, the thrushes twittered passionately outside. The first bird notes of spring, he thought again, how unsophisticated these little creatures were in their chatter! "How bright it is here!" she said; "it is much brighter here than elsewhere." "Do you think so?" he answered smilingly.
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