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Updated: May 27, 2025
The sparrows had flown up to the forest of iron girders again, and one could hear their sharp little chirps, the twittering with which they serenaded the setting sun, under the warm panes of the glass roof. The atmosphere, moreover, had become heavy, there was a damp greenhouse-like warmth; the air, stationary as it was, had an odour as of humus, freshly turned over.
At the noise of this babbling and laughter, similar sounds were heard in the next room, just as in a bird's nest when one little fledgeling chirps all the rest join in, lifting the little heads and trying the winglets. "Reveille is sounded," said my friend, with a happy smile. "I have to go and muster my troops; this next chamber is their bedroom."
During the nocturnal migrations of geese and other water-fowl, sonorous clangs from the van may be heard in the darkness overhead, answered by clangs in the rear. Certain cries serve as danger signals, which, as the sportsman knows to his cost, are understood by the same species and by others. The domestic cock crows, and the humming-bird chirps, in triumph over a defeated rival.
Not a worm that crawls, Or grasshopper that chirps about the grass, Or beetle basking on the sunny walls, Or mail-clad fly that skims the face of glass The river wears in summer; not a bird That sings the tranquil glory of the fields, Or single sight is seen or sound is heard, But some new pleasure to my full soul yields!
Ellis regards as a slip of the pen: "I had eight birds hatcht in one nest, Four Cocks there were, and Hens the rest; I nurst them up with pain and care, Nor cost, nor labour did I spare, Till at the last they felt their wing, Mounted the Trees, and learn'd to sing; Chief of the Brood then took his flight To Regions far, and left me quite; My mournful chirps I after send, Till he return, or I do end; Leave not thy nest, thy Dam and Sire, Fly back and sing amidst this Quire.
Then, one day, there had been a great chattering about the warm cup of milkweed fiber and thistle-down in the elder-bush, husky cheeping from the nest mingling with the joyous chirps of the mother-bird as she tilted and danced on its edge or fluttered ecstatically above it; and from the end of a swaying twig close by had swelled the proud song of the male. The big egg had hatched.
One had the idea that the concealed vocalists were continually meeting each other at little social gatherings, where they exchanged pretty loving greetings, and indulged in a leafy gossip, interspersed with occasional fragments of music, vocal and instrumental; now a long trill a trilling, a tinkling, a sweeping of one minute finger-tip over metal strings as fine as gossamer threads describe it how you will, you cannot describe it; then the long, low, inflected scream, like a lark's throat-note drawn out and inflected; little chirps and chirruping exclamations and remarks, and a soft warbled note three or four or more times repeated, and sometimes, the singer fluttering up out of the foliage and hovering in the air, displaying his green and yellow plumage while emitting these lovely notes; and again the trill, trill answering trill in different keys; and again the music scream, as if some unsubstantial being, fairy or woodnymph had screamed somewhere in her green hiding-place.
And nothing so chirps up a woman as to have on becoming ones that fit and are fresh and make her feel she can walk across the floor without wishing she had a shawl on. The way Miss Araminta has bloomed out is as amazing as a moon-plant.
The blackbird burst into a ripple of golden throaty notes, and from some distant green spot in the city an unknown wild-bird answered with a frenzy of liquid trills until the sparrows paused in their ablutions to look up with restless chirps. Then a butterfly came and sat on a cluster of heliotrope and waved his crimson-banded wings in the hot sunshine.
In later life there are such moments when the youthful emotions come back, as certain birds do in winter, and the elderly heart chirps and twitters to itself as if it were young. But it is best to discourage this fondness; and Mrs. March joined her husband in mocking it, when he made her observe how fit it was that their silver wedding journey should be resumed as part of his after-cure.
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