Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 13, 2025
There is also a Western chickadee, a Western chewink, a Western blue jay, a Western bluebird, a Western song sparrow, Western grouse, quail, hen-hawk, etc. One of the most remarkable birds of the West seems to be a species of skylark, met with on the plains of Dakota, which mounts to the height of three or four hundred feet, and showers down its ecstatic notes.
We are fortunate to see him so soon; he might tantalize us all day with his song, and never give us a glimpse of himself, for he delights in these quiet places, under the thickest shrubs. He is the towhee bunting or chewink, sometimes called ground robin, and in that corner of Colorado he takes the place the robin fills with us, the most common bird about the house.
A robin upon a staff, was the highest object in sight. Swallows were flying about us, and the chewink and cuckoo were heard near at hand. The summit consists of a few acres, destitute of trees, covered with bare rocks, interspersed with blueberry bushes, raspberries, gooseberries, strawberries, moss, and a fine wiry grass.
Toward the end of the month, when the gelatinous masses in the water courses have developed the little black dots sufficiently so that we can see they are tadpoles, when the songsters have been joined by the catbird, the rose-breasted grosbeak, the woodthrush, the whippoorwill, the cheerful and friendly chewink and several of the warblers and flycatchers, the rivers and creeks will be fringed with the brilliant yellow of the marsh marigold, and we shall think of Shakespeare, walking the meadows of Avon, getting material for that song of the musicians in Cymbeline: And winking Mary-buds begin To ope their golden eyes.
And penetrating to some yet lonelier place, we find it consecrated to that life-long sorrow, whatever it may be, which is made immortal in the plaintive cadence of the Pewee. There is one favorite bird, the Chewink, or Ground-Robin, which, I always fancied, must have been known to Keats when he wrote those few words of perfect descriptiveness,
Some people think he says 'Chewink! chewink! and call him by that name; while some who have noticed where he lives, and seen that the color of his sides is like the reddish breast of the Robin, call him the Ground Robin, though he is no relation of the Thrush family.
The people babble who talk about them, not knowing what a brook is. We have heard about the nightingale and the morning lark till we tire of them. Catch for your next prayer meeting talk a chewink or a brown thresher. It is high time that we hoist our church windows, especially those over the pulpit, and let in some fresh air from the fields and mountains.
He does not hang timidly upon the skirts of our rural life, like, say, the thrasher or the chewink; he plunges in boldly and takes his chances, and his share, and often more than his share, of whatever is going. What vigor, what cheer, how persistent, how prolific, how adaptive; pugnacious, but cheery, pilfering, but companionable!
If it were not for the light-hearted tremolo of the chewink thrown in now and then, and the loud, cheery ditty of the summer yellow-bird, who begins soon after the pewee, one would be almost superstitious about so unnatural a greeting to the new day. The evening call of the bird is different.
Under parts whitish, all striped with dark brown, the heaviest stripes making a large blackish spot on the breast. A Citizen of the United States east of the plains, nesting from Virginia northward to the Fur Countries. A Ground Gleaner as well as a Weed Warrior, and a constant joyful songster. Chewink.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking