United States or Venezuela ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
As for wild birds, the robins and wrens and thrushes which are predestined prey, there is only one way to save them, the way which Archibald Douglas took to save the honour of Scotland, "bell the cat." A good-sized sleigh-bell, if she be strong enough to bear it, a bunch of little bells, if she be small and slight, and the pleasures of the chase are over.
Last year the garden was a garden of thrushes: this year it is a garden of wrens. That is possibly an exaggeration, but this little Tetrazzini among the birds has never seemed to me to trill so dominantly and over so wide a rule. As for the thrushes, I do not know what has happened to them.
You see they have a bill like a chisel for gouging out insects, and with this same tool they make their homes." "Bluebirds and Wrens and Martins like to live in holes and boxes, though they can't make holes for themselves," said Rap. "Yes, the habits of many birds have changed since the country has become civilized and House People are to be found in all parts of it.
Thinking he might know about the nest of the Rock Wren, for an old miner knows a great many things he never thinks of making a book about, I asked him if there were any Wrens around there. "'Wall, I should smile, stranger! Lots on 'em more'n one kind, too but mostly not the reg'lar kind they have where you tenderfoots live bigger, and pickeder in front, and make more fuss.
"But the birds come down to bathe every Midsummer Day, the goldfinches, and the sparrows, and the blackbirds, and the thrushes, and the swallows, and the wrens, and the robins, and almost every one of them, except two or three, whose great-grandfathers got into disgrace a long while ago.
Thus the apparently useless industry of the tiny wrens has served an invaluable end, and the tremulous chorus is again timidly taken up little hymns of thanksgiving we may imagine them now. These and many others are sights which a half-hour's tramp, without even wetting our shoes, may show us. Before we leave, hints of more deeply hidden secrets of the marsh may perhaps come to us.
A great blackbird flew out with a loud "chook, chook," and the red of the haw on his yellow bill. A robin trilled from a low rose-bush; two wrens searched diligently on a fallen tree for breakfast, quite unconcerned when I rested a moment beside them; and a shrewmouse slipped across the road followed directly by its mate.
The Capitol grounds, with their fine large trees of many varieties, draw many kinds of birds. In the rear of the building the extensive grounds are peculiarly attractive, being a gentle slope, warm and protected, and quite thickly wooded. Here in early spring I go to hear the robins, catbirds, blackbirds, wrens, etc.
The finches and the thrushes, and the yellow-hammers and the wrens, and all the birds, every one of them, except Choo Hoo, the great rebel, sing Kapchack's praises all day long, and tell him that they love him more than they love their eggs, or their wives, or their nests, and that he is the very best and nicest of all, and that he never did anything wrong, but is always right and always just.
At its entry Yolanda clapped her hands and cried out with childish delight. When the pan was placed before Castleman, she exclaimed: "Be careful, uncle! Don't thrust the knife too deep, or you will kill the birds." Uncle Castleman ran the point of the knife around the outer edge of the crust, and, with a twist of the blade, quickly lifted it from the pan, when out flew a dozen or more wrens.
Word Of The Day