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Latest among the singers are the chewinks, the wood pewees, the field sparrows, and, of course, the goldfinches and the cuckoos. The young chewinks left their nests in the pasture on the third, and the chewink's feelings expressed themselves in song for two weeks after that. He out-sang the field sparrows, whose young were hatched August third, and left their nest on the twelfth.
And when you hear the Chewinks scratching in the underbrush, remember they are putting leaves on the grave of the White Dawnsinger. Surely you have guessed the secret; the flower is the Bloodroot, and the Whizz is the Sharp-shinned Hawk. The Prairie-girl with Yellow Hair Tall and fair was the Prairie-girl.
Everv bird of them must have been born without a palate, it seemed to me. White-eyed chewinks were at home in the dense palmetto scrub, whence they announced themselves unmistakably by sharp whistles. Now and then one of them mounted a leaf, and allowed me to see his pale yellow iris.
He fell fluttering and dying; and as she flew to him, with a cry of distress, the Yellow-eyed wicked Whizz struck her down by his side. The Chewinks scratched leaves over the two white bodies, and I think that Mother Carey dropped a tear on the place. That was the end of the White Dawnsinger and his bride.
The chewinks and field sparrows were singing, but it was like the music of a village singer after Patti; or, to make the comparison less unjust, like the Pastoral Symphony of Handel after a Wagner tempest. It is curious how deeply we are sometimes affected by a very trifling occurrence. I have remembered many times a slight scene in which three purple finches were the actors.
I have seen two male chewinks facing each other and wrathfully impelled upward in the same manner, while the female that was the bone of contention between them regarded them unconcernedly from the near bushes. The bobolink is also a precipitate and impetuous wooer.
There was a veritable paradise of birds in the pine barren, Dick Sherrill had said, robins and bluebirds, flickers and woodpeckers with blazing cockades, shrikes and chewinks. It was an endless monotony of pine trees, vividly green and far apart, into which Diane presently rode. A buzzard floated with uptilted wings above the sparse woodland to the west.
In the same pine woods, too, there was much good music: house wrens, Carolina wrens, red-eyed and white-eyed vireos, pine warblers, yellow-throated warblers, blue yellowbacks, red-eyed chewinks, and, twice welcome, like the bluebirds, a Carolina chickadee.
As always, a few crows cawed above the deep woods, and the chewinks threshed about among the dry leaves. A band of larks were gathering for migration, and the frosty air was vibrant with their calls to each other. Killdeers were circling above them in flocks. A half dozen robins gathered over a wild grapevine, and chirped cheerfully, as they pecked at the frosted fruit.
Red-eyed chewinks, still far from their native berry pastures, hopped into a bush to cry, "Who's he?" at the passing of a stranger, in whom, for aught I know, they may have half recognized an old acquaintance. As for the mocking-birds, they were at the front here, as they were everywhere.
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