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Updated: June 27, 2025
I found no great difficulty, however, in making my way to a certain ripple on the river where one of my ouzels lived. He was at home, busily gleaning his breakfast among the pebbles of a shallow portion of the margin, apparently unaware of anything extraordinary in the weather.
On one occasion, while rambling along the shore of a mountain lake, where the birds, at least those born that season, had never seen a man, I sat down to rest on a large stone close to the water's edge, upon which it seemed the ouzels and sandpipers were in the habit of alighting when they came to feed on that part of the shore, and some of the other birds also, when they came down to wash or drink.
A few ducks are usually seen sailing on the lake, apparently more for pleasure than anything else, and the ouzels at the head of the rapids sing always; while robins, grosbeaks, and the Douglas squirrels are busy in the groves, making delightful company, and intensifying the feeling of grateful sequestration without ruffling the deep, hushed calm and peace.
One stormy morning in winter when the Merced River was blue and green with unmelted snow, I observed one of my ouzels perched on a snag out in the midst of a swift-rushing rapid, singing cheerily, as if everything was just to his mind; and while I stood on the bank admiring him, he suddenly plunged into the sludgy current, leaving his song abruptly broken off.
There was the water beyond; the kindly calm water, all green with the moss and the nests of the ouzels and the boughs of the hazels and willows, where the swans were asleep in the reeds, and the broad lilies spread wide and cool. But she did not see any memory in it.
The hen caught sight of me and beat a hurried retreat, without approaching the nest. The young ouzels kept very still; occasionally one of them would half raise its head. That was almost the only movement I noticed. Presently the cock appeared, with his beak full of caterpillars.
"Sir," said she, speaking, as he did, in the guttural Gaelic tongue, "come, I beseech you, to the help of two poor ouzels, whose nest is far in under the roots of yonder birch tree. If you help not quickly, their little fledglings will be eaten up by a thieving stoat that has but a few moments ago entered their nest."
Furthermore, at certain hours of the day, when the sunshine is poured down at the required angle, the whole mass of the spray enveloping the fairy establishment is brilliantly irised; and it is through so glorious a rainbow atmosphere as this that some of our blessed ouzels obtain their first peep at the world.
At certain seasons of the year rain storms come up as unexpectedly in the Himalayas as they do in the Grampians. The rain put a final end to my observations on that nest, as I had to leave Naini Tal on the following day an event which caused more sorrow to me than to the ouzels!
The ouzels pass it by, and so do the ducks; they could hardly get into it if they would, without plumping straight down inside the circling trees. Yet these isolated gems, lying like fallen fruit detached from the branches, are not altogether without inhabitants and joyous, animating visitors.
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