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Updated: May 16, 2025
"What's that to you, old snail-crusher?" said the blackbird, for he was in rather an ill temper that morning, through having had a fright in the night, and being woke up by old Shoutnight the owl, who had been out mousing and lost his wife, and sat at last in the ivy-tod halloaing and hoo-hooing, till the gardener's wife threw her husband's old boot out of the window at him, when he went flop into the laurel bush, and banged and bounced about, hissing and snapping with his great bill, while his goggle eyes glowed so angrily that the blackbird's good lady popped off her nest in a hurry and broke one of her eggs, and, what was worse, was afraid to go back again till the eggs were nearly cold; and then she was so cross about it, that although the broken egg was only a bad one, she turned round upon Flutethroat, her husband, who had been almost frightened to death, and told him in a pet it was all his fault for not picking out a better place for the nest.
"Well," said Mrs Flutethroat, "I'm very glad he's a prisoner, for the nasty, great, cruel-looking thing must be ten times worse than Hookbeak, the hawk, and if it were let loose here we should all be killed. Pink-tchink-chink," she cried in alarm; for just then the man, who was a falconer, took his bird's hood off, and shouted at the heron by the pond.
There, hark at them; isn't it dreadful?" "Heigho he ha ha hum mum; yes, very," said Flutethroat. "Oh! dear; how sleepy I am!" "Sleepy," said Mrs Flutethroat crossly; "so am I; then why don't you go and stop that dreadful noise?" "How can I stop it? They have as good a right to be there as we have to be here; so we must not interfere with them."
The noise that Mrs Flutethroat complained of proceeded from the low branches of a large fir-tree; and as the good dame listened the sounds came again louder than ever, "Peedle-weedle-wee, peedle-weedle-wee," in a small, thready, pipy tone, as though the birds who uttered the cry had had their voices split up into two or three pieces.
All this while Mrs Flutethroat was crying, "Pink-pink-pink" in the shrubbery, in a state of the greatest alarm, for a man had passed by the place where she was teaching her young ones to fly, carrying a bird on his gloved hand; while the bird had a curious cap upon its head, so contrived that it could not see anything; but the blackbird could see its yellow legs and cruel hooked claws that were stuck tightly into the thick glove the man wore.
But Flutethroat could not wake up just then, for he was enjoying a most delightful dream: he was living in a country where there were no cats, nor any other living things but slugs, snails, and grubs; while all kinds of fruit grew in profusion, so that there was no difficulty in obtaining any amount of food; but one great drawback to his happiness was an ugly, misshapen little bird, which would keep running after him, and crying, "Peedle-weedle-wee, peedle-weedle-wee," or else shouting at him to "wake up."
"Oh! bother," said Flutethroat, slowly drawing his head out from beneath his wing, and finding that the voices were real, and plainly to be heard on both sides of the puzzled bird; for Mrs Flutethroat was crying out "Wake up, wake up," and the bottle-tits were squabbling more than ever for the warmest place.
At last one evening, when all the birds were as busy as their old friends the bees, all of a sudden there was a complete full stop throughout the garden, for from one of the low branches of the great cedar someone suddenly shouted out in a full, loud, and distinct voice "Cuckoo!" and again two or three times over "Cuckoo!" "Halloa!" said Flutethroat, ceasing his worm hunt, "who is that?"
So it was no wonder that Flutethroat, the blackbird, turned grumpy when neighbour Spottleover, the thrush, called him "Yellowbill;" for of course he did not like it any better than a man with a red nose would like to be called Hot-poker. But it was such a fine morning, and there were so many dew-worms lying out in the cool grass that the neighbours could not stop to be crabby.
"There, at last," said Mrs Flutethroat, "if you sleep after that fashion, that old green-eyed cat must have you some day, and I shall be made a disconsolate widow." "Well, what's the matter?" said Flutethroat, opening his yellow bill quite an inch, and gaping dreadfully without putting a wing before his mouth. "What's the matter?" said his mate crabbily.
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