bird-designer

Updated: August 26, 2026

When the bird-designer made this bird he set out to make a different kind of sparrow, but then had pity upon the amateur ornithologist who finds the sparrows even now almost as difficult to classify as the amateur botanists do their asters; so he dipped the bird in some raspberry juice John Burroughs says pokeberry juice and the finch came out of the dye with a wash of raspberry red on his head, shoulders and upper breast, brightest on the head and the lower part of his back.

Frederick John Lazell - Some Spring Days in Iowa