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Updated: June 13, 2025
You have beheld us because you held the ring, and are of one brotherhood with us in your marble, but on that one night all may behold us." "And when is that?" Gerald asked, again polite, in a pause. "At the festival of the harvest," said Phoebes. "On that night as the moon rises it strikes one beam of perfect light on to the altar in certain temples.
There is one place in the country where English sparrows have not yet come; and whenever they do appear there, they will meet a hostile reception. I shall kill every one that comes, for the sake of retaining the wrens, catbirds, phoebes and thrushes that now literally make home happy for my family.
And there are old leather portmanteaus, like stranded porpoises, their mouths gaping in gaunt hunger for the food with which they used to be gorged to bulging repletion; and old brass andirons, waiting until time shall revenge them on their paltry substitutes, and they shall have their own again, and bring with them the fore-stick and the back-log of ancient days; and the empty churn, with its idle dasher, which the Nancys and Phoebes, who have left their comfortable places to the Bridgets and Norahs, used to handle to good purpose; and the brown, shaky old spinning-wheel, which was running, it may be, in the days when they were hinging the Salem witches.
The sunset gleam of the water through the darkening trees, the soft plaintive call of the phoebes from the woods, the sleepy drone of Bossy's bell from the pasture, and the scents of the garden made up the atmosphere of home. "Well, well, and you have come to stay," his father said for the tenth time, rubbing his hands along his knee in ecstasy, "to stay."
But he has not been here this season, for the phoebes built their nest upon this shelf last summer.
On the drive up from the village he showed me the place, a mile or more from their haunts on the breezy mountain lands, where the sheep were driven annually to be washed. It was a deep pool then, and a gristmill stood near by. He said he could see now the huddled sheep, and the overhanging rocks with the phoebes' nests in the crevices.
It is pleasant to observe how naturally birds flock together in hard times, precisely as men do, and doubtless for similar reasons. The edge of the wood, just mentioned, was populous with them: robins, bluebirds, chickadees, fox sparrows, snow-birds, song sparrows, tree sparrows, phoebes, a golden-winged woodpecker, and a rusty blackbird.
The migratory tide of robins, song-sparrows, phoebes, and other early birds was still moving northward; but multitudes had dropped out of line, having reached their haunts of the previous year. The sunny hillsides and its immediate vicinity seemed a favorite lounging-place both for the birds of passage and for those already at home.
The robins were reduced to picking up seeds in the asparagus bed. The bluebirds appeared to be trying to glean something from the bark of trees, clinging rather awkwardly to the trunk meanwhile. Half a dozen or more phoebes were in the edge of a wood; and they too seemed to have found out that, if worst came to worst, the tree-boles would yield a pittance for their relief.
It certainly is good to be back here in the Old Orchard and planning a home once more. We've made a terribly long journey, and I for one am glad it's over." "I just saw your cousins, Mr. and Mrs. Phoebe, and they already have a nest and eggs," said Peter. "The Phoebes are a funny lot," replied Chebec. "They are the only members of the family that can stand cold weather.
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