United States or Nigeria ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
It was a happy thought of Pompey in his sickness, when his physician prescribed a thrush for his dinner, and his servants told him that in summer time thrushes were not to be found anywhere but in Lucullus's fattening coops, that he would not suffer them to fetch one thence, but observing to his physician, "So if Lucullus had not been an epicure, Pompey had not lived," ordered something else that could easily be got to be prepared for him.
But other creatures were as busy as they. Strange little brown birds whitethroats and linnets perhaps, if the eye could only have followed them flew in and out of the blackthorn hedges all day long. Thrushes and blackbirds hopped pompously about the lawns, and the starlings chattered like old women on the roofs of the red gables.
"Well," chuckled Agias, "he'll have to take his risk. If it's lost on the road, why, highwaymen stripped me. It is one of the fortunes of trade." Phaon was fully convinced that here was a fine chance to do some picking on his own account. "Doubtless," he began, "you are not in such haste that you cannot enjoy one of those thrushes that sheep of a landlord is roasting for me. Phui!
Occasionally one makes the passage to Great Britain by following the ships, and finding them at convenient distances along the route; and I have been told that over fifty different species of our more common birds, such as robins, starlings, grosbeaks, thrushes, etc., have been found in Ireland, having, of course, crossed in this way.
The young of altricial birds, like orioles, and bluebirds, and thrushes, being born naked and helpless, have a reason for loving their nest-homes, so carefully and delicately built to shelter their nude infancy. But the young gull cares not for "a local habitation and a name."
"So," said Appius to Axius, "if you enclose five thousand thrushes in such an aviary as Merula has described and there happens to be a banquet or a triumph, you will gain forthwith that sixty thousand sesterces which you so keenly covet and be able to lend the money out at good interest."
The blackbirds whistled in one direction, the thrushes trilled and gurgled in another, and overhead, both among the covering leaves and from the open sky, a chorus of twittering and piping filled the chambers of the day.
The pines were scrubby, what are known as the loblolly pines, and from ten to twelve inches through at the butt. In a low bottom, among some red cedars, I saw robins and several hermit thrushes, besides the yellow-rumped warbler. That night, as the sun went down on the one hand, the full moon rose up on the other, like the opposite side of an enormous scale.
As we traversed the cool woods of Acton, with stout staves in our hands, we were cheered by the song of the red-eye, the thrushes, the phoebe, and the cuckoo; and as we passed through the open country, we inhaled the fresh scent of every field, and all nature lay passive, to be viewed and travelled.
Regularly, as the time for sleep drew nigh, the old inhabitants among the woodland birds the thrushes, the robins, the finches, and the wrens squabbled loudly as they settled to rest: their favourite roosting places were being invaded by aliens of their species, that, desirous of breaking for the night their northward journey, dropped, twittering, into every bush and brake on the margin of the copse.
Word Of The Day