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How easy it is to identify the steady beats of a crow, or the more rapid strokes of a duck; how distinctive is the frequent looping flight of a goldfinch, or the longer, more direct swings of a woodpecker! Hardly any two birds have wings exactly similar in shape, every wing being exquisitely adapted to its owner's needs.
Mice, and even rats, were scampering about in every direction, gnawing holes in the sacks, and getting into all manner of mischief. "We were afraid of the rats at first," said the Robin, "but we soon found that they were much too busy to trouble their heads about us. The Goldfinch is very anxious that the sparrows should not find out this barn.
"Yet my birds," said Lucy, caressing the goldfinch, which nestled to her bosom, "are not like me, and I love them. Nay, I often think I could love those better who differ from me the most. I feel it so in books, when, for instance, I read a novel or a play; and you, uncle, I like almost in proportion to my perceiving in myself nothing in common with you."
It has but little to unlearn or to forget in the one case, but great progress to make in the other. How far is its rudimentary nest a mere platform of coarse twigs and dry stalks of weeds from the deep, compact, finely woven and finely modeled nest of the goldfinch or king-bird, and what a gulf between its indifference toward its young and their solicitude!
This was strange experience for the little fellow, for heretofore none of the large birds had ever disturbed him. He scolded furiously, but he went; no one could stand against that determined approach. If the goldfinch wished to bathe, his persecutor took his place on the nearest perch, not a foot away, thus driving him to the floor with the intention of using the big birds' bath.
If not fully and accurately repeated, there are at least suggested the notes of the robin, wren, catbird, high-hole, goldfinch, and song sparrow.
They put me, the servant of God, into a basketwork chaise and drove me with two horses; one sits in the basket like a goldfinch, looking at God's world and thinking of nothing.... The plain of Siberia begins, I think, from Ekaterinburg, and ends goodness knows where; I should say it is very like our South Russian Steppe, except for the little birch copses here and there and the cold wind that stings one's cheeks.
This is well known to bird-fowlers, and on a dry day in January they take two large bunches of docks 'red docks' they call them tied round the centre like faggots and well smeared at the top with birdlime. These are placed on the ground, by a hedge, and near them a decoy goldfinch in a cage. Goldfinches eat dock-seed, and if any approach the decoy-bird calls.
"The fox," cried Tchink, "impossible he's nobody." "Certainly not," said Te-te, "a mere nonentity." "Quite out of the question," said the goldfinch. "Out of the running," said the hare. "Absurd," said the jay; and they all raised a clamour, protesting that even to mention the fox was to waste the public time. "I am not so sure of that," muttered Cloctaw. "We might do worse; I should not object."
The flight of the Flicker, the Goldfinch, the Nighthawk, and the Sparrow Hawk, is so characteristic in each case that I have often been able to name the bird for a student upon being told its approximate size and the character of its flight. Who can see a Wild Duck swimming, or a Gull flying, without at once referring it to the group of birds to which it belongs?
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