United States or Spain ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
All the cousins of the Chicadees listened to the warning and got ready to go; but Tomtit, their leader, only laughed and turned a dozen wheels around a twig that served him for a bar. "Go to the South?" said he. "Not I; I am too happy here; and as for frost and snow, I never saw any, and I don't believe there are such things."
I will leave the Chicadees and their companions to speak of another class of birds of different character and habits: these are the Jays, and their sable-plumed congeners of the Crow family. In all parts of the country that abound in woods of any description, we are sure to be greeted by the loud voice of the Blue Jay, one of the most conspicuous tenants of the forest.
The noisy, rollicking Chicadees continued to make fun of their cousins as they saw them now gathering in the woods along the river; and at length, when the moon was big, bright, and full, the cousins arose to the call of the leaders and all flew away in the gloom.
If it was uttered by the young birds only, we might suppose them to be taking lessons in music, and that this was a specimen of their first attempts. I have often heard the Golden Robin warbling in a similar manner. In company with the Chicadees in their foraging excursions, we often see two Speckled Woodpeckers, differing apparently only in size, each having a sort of red crest.
Very soon the leaves fell from the trees and the Nut-hatches and the King-wrens were so busy getting ready to go that the Chicadees left off play for a minute, to ask questions.
This held a long, shiny brown transparent case, in which was a white grub much too small for the big coat he was wearing. The grub was sound asleep, and would have come out next spring, as a big steel-blue Mud-wasp had I let him alone. But there are plenty of Mud-wasps so I fed him to the Chicadees, which likely is what Mother Carey would have done. The Cicada and the Katydid
These notes are not a song; but there is a liveliness in their sound, most frequently uttered during a pleasant winter-day, causing them to be associated with these agreeable changes in the weather. The Chicadees are not seen, like Snow-Birds, most numerous during a snow-storm, or after a fall of snow.
The small birds from the South appear with a few short notes of spring, and the pert chicadees that have braved it all winter, now lead the singing with their cheery "I told you so" notes, till robins and blackbirds join in, and with their more ambitious singing make all the lesser roundelays forgot.
The air was full of the good news. The Chicadees felt it, and knew it through and through. They went mad with joy, chasing each other round and round the trees and through the hollow logs, shouting "The spring is here, the spring is here, Hurree, Hurree, Hurree," and in another week their joyous lives were going on as before the trouble came.
But no one could tell anything about it, no one was going that way, and the great river was hidden under ice and snow. About this time a messenger from Mother Carey was passing with a message to the Caribou in the Far North; but all he could tell the Chicadees was that he could not be their guide, as he had other business.
Word Of The Day