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Updated: June 8, 2025
It is an all-sheltering fondness; it is a delicate superintendence over the comforts of another; it is a brooding thought about the nestlings of one's heart, hearth, or associations; it is a cultivated instinct that smooths out difficulties, and steps right along beside purity and loveliness.
At that moment an old raven, followed by all his nestlings, happened to pass, and attracted by the horse's carcase, he called to his young ones to come and feast with him. Niezguinek seized the smallest of the birds and held it firmly. "Let my birdling go," said the old raven, "I will give you in return anything you like to ask."
He fell greedily upon his bacon, and swallowed his potatoes whole instead of bread. La Teuse, however, could not persuade Desiree to finish her dinner. That big baby was lost in ecstasy over the nestlings, asking questions, wanting to know what food they ate, if they laid eggs, and how the cockbirds could be known.
His neck was stretched toward the earth, in the intensity of his search for something to ease the bitter hunger of his nestlings and his mate. Not far from the sea, and still in darkness, stood a low, round hill, or swelling upland. Bleak and shelterless, whipped by every wind that the heavens could let loose, it bore no bush but an occasional juniper scrub.
Then came Nemesis, for the sparrows were compelled to go foraging for food with which to fill the greedy beaks, and during their enforced absence the swallows returned in force, threw the nestlings out, and demolished the home. The sparrows sought other quarters, and the swallows triumphantly built a new nest on the ruins of the old.
Whilst the mother-bird is feeding, or brooding over her nestlings, the maternal instinct is probably stronger than the migratory; but the instinct which is the more persistent gains the victory, and at last, at a moment when her young ones are not in sight, she takes flight and deserts them.
The nestlings throve in the sunshine, in the heart of a fertile country, while the father sang as he guided his plow, and the mother at home cleverly made the soup and kept the children in order. There was enough new vitality and industry there to make another family, a whole race.
Her plan was far more cunning than these: it was to point out to the eager seeker after forbidden knowledge, convenient places where the nest might be but certainly was not, and so to bewilder the spy, by many hints, that she would not realize it when the real passage to the waiting nestlings was made.
Somehow he seemed much more cheerful than his companion. "I was actually glad when our last nestlings were big enough to leave home and hustle for themselves. But, of course," he added, "I still keep an eye on them." Rusty Wren had already begun to hunt for tidbits. Almost immediately he found an ant, which he snatched up and carried away.
An inquisitive hen runs up to see what good things there are to eat. In the garden beyond, the father works busily at his spading. The name which Millet gave to this picture is the French word Becquée, which cannot be translated into any corresponding word in English. It means a beakful, that is, the food which the mother bird holds in her beak to give to the nestlings.
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