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The cedar and balsam shelter dripped with morning dew, the place where fire had been was black and dead, and ruffling his feathers the warbler continued his song in triumph. Nada, hidden under her shelter, and still half dreaming, heard him. She lay with her head nestled in the crook of Roger's arm, and the birdsong seemed to come to her from a great distance away.
But on this day I met with a curious little adventure and heard something very extraordinary, very mysterious, which I could not avoid connecting in my mind with the unseen warbler that so often followed me in my rambles.
Cryptolopha xanthoschista and Hodgson's grey-headed flycatcher-warbler are the names that ornithologists have given to a very small bird. But, diminutive though he be, he is heard, if not seen, more often than any other bird in all parts of the Western Himalayas. It is impossible for a human being to visit any station between Naini Tal and Murree without remarking this warbler.
Rodin waited for some moments with angry impatience, thinking the voice would continue; but Rose-Pompon was silent, or only continued to hum, and soon changed to another air, that of the Good Pope, which she entoned, but without words. Rodin, not venturing to look out of his window to see who was this troublesome warbler, shrugged his shoulders, resumed his pen, and continued: "To it again.
It was the voice of a warbler, and a most alluring song. Such indeed we found it, for on the instant the Enthusiast sprang to her feet, alert to her finger-tips, crying, "That's the bird we're after!" adding as usual, as she started across the field, "You sit still! I won't go far," while as usual, also, I snatched my things and followed.
But, best of all, Bobby loved a comfortable and friendly robin redbreast not the American thrush that is called a robin, but the smaller Old World warbler. It had its nest of grass and moss and feathers, and many a silver hair shed by Bobby, low in a near-by thorn bush.
Hence, as we stood about our camp-fire one afternoon looking out over the lake, I was the only one to see a little commotion in the water, half hidden by the near branches, as of some tiny swimmer struggling to reach the shore. Rushing to its rescue in the canoe, I found a yellow-rumped warbler, quite exhausted, clinging to a twig that hung down into the water.
But sometimes mamma did not heed the cries, and sailed calmly by, alighting a few rails beyond her hungry infant, though he held out his fluttering wings in the bird-baby's begging way, exactly as does a young warbler who wouldn't be a mouthful for him.
After all that has been said about the "pathetic fallacy," so called, it remains true that Nature speaks to us according to our mood. With all her "various language" she "cannot talk and find ears too." And so it happens that some, listening to the black-throated green warbler, have brought back a report of "Cheese, cheese, a little more cheese." Prosaic and hungry souls!
The Curlew soars to a great height, and upon outstretched wings hovers in the air whilst uttering its plaintive wail; the cock Grouse, as if dissatisfied with its "crowing," springs into the air and becomes a conspicuous object of the moor; the wary Redshank, poised on flickering wings, forgets its mournful alarm cry, and finds again its melodious song; and even the secretive Grasshopper-Warbler crawls out of the midst of the thicket in order to "reel," just as, for a similar reason, Savi's Warbler climbs to the top of a tall reed.
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