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Updated: June 9, 2025
The great solitudes have gone, for with tillage there must be roads now, and villages, and together with the solitudes the wonderful teeming bird-life must have vanished, too.
"I don't want you to shoot the poor bird; I only want to hear your argument!" The chief could not immediately reply, Ian came to his rescue. "There are qualities in life," he said. "One cannot think the fish-life so fine, so full of delight as the bird-life!" "No. But," said Mercy, "have the fishes not as good a right to their life as the birds?"
To fly or go slowly at will, to pass unshaken over rough and smooth alike, fording rivers without being wet, and mounting hills without climbing, this is indeed unmixed delight. It is the nearest approach to bird-life we seem capable of, since all the monster bubbles and flying fabrics that have been the sport of winds from the days of Montgolfier downwards have brought us no nearer to it.
The charming effect was increased by the bell-like, chirping notes they all uttered together, and as they swept round or doubled in the air at intervals came these tempests of melodious sound a most perfect expression of wild jubilant bird-life.
It was cloudy, but very close, and we passed through open grass country, bounded on each side by tall forest, in which bird-life seemed plentiful, cockatoos and parrots making a great noise. Birds of paradise were also calling out with their very noticeable and peculiar falsetto cry.
They were never persecuted, for the natives do not eat them, though they are really very good the flesh being something like wild goose in flavour. A higher civilization is changing all this: the country is becoming rapidly overrun with emigrants, especially by Italians, the pitiless enemies of all bird-life.
Then there were times when these two opposite feelings mingled and would be together in my mind for hours at a time, and this occurred oftenest during the autumnal migration, when the great wave of bird-life set northwards, and all through March and April the birds were visible in flock succeeding flock from dawn to dark, until the summer visitants were all gone, to be succeeded in May by the birds from the far south, flying from the Antarctic winter.
Of bird-life there is a large representation, both native and migratory. Among them are some fifty species of "waders." In some parts of the island, the very unpleasant land-crab, about the size of a soup-plate, seems to exist in millions, although thousands is probably nearer the actual. The American soldiers made their acquaintance in large numbers at the time of the Santiago campaign.
It was about him everywhere, a melody of bird-life subdued and sleepy even though the sun was still warmly aglow in the sky. A hundred times he had watched this miracle of bird instinct, the going-to-bed of feathered creatures in the weeks and months when there was no real night. He picked up his pack and went on.
Competition, in the case of mice, thus appears a quite trifling factor when compared with weather. Other facts to the same effect are also given as regards squirrels. As to birds, it is well known how they suffer from sudden changes of weather. Late snow-storms are as destructive of bird-life on the English moors, as they are in Siberia; and Ch.
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