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Updated: May 18, 2025
I call it a garden because Mr Pinsent called it so; and, to be sure, it boasted a stretch of turf, a couple of flower-beds, a flagstaff, and a small lean-to greenhouse. But the pride of the garden was its dovecote, formed of a large cider-barrel on a mast. The barrel was pierced with pigeon-holes, and fitted with ledges on which the birds stood to preen themselves.
Since he himself had known it he had seen that it was kept at its best. Its dark blue depths reflected in their pellucid clearness the water plants growing at its edge and the enclosing shrubs and trees. The turf bordering it was velvet-thick and green, and a few flag-steps led down to the water. Birds came there to drink and bathe and preen and dress their feathers.
Flocks of Waders roam about the tidal estuaries in search of food, and different kinds of Gulls assemble there and preen their feathers or sleep; Warblers alter their mode of life, and in the osier bed, or amongst the elders, seek their food together in peace; Finches, Buntings, Pipits, and Wagtails, though food is everywhere abundant, gather themselves together respectively into bands which, as winter approaches, grow into flocks and even into composite flocks; and as the Warblers leave for the south, so their places are filled by flocks of Thrushes and Finches from the north.
Masie, as she listened, plumed her head as a pigeon would preen its feathers, stood up to see her train sweep the floor, sat down again to watch the stained satin folds crumple themselves about her feet, and was at last so overcome by it all that she threw her arms around Sam, to his intense delight, and kissed him twice, and would have given Nat an equal number had not Felix called to him that the guests were beginning to arrive.
To slip it is for me always an event, an excitement. To come to a new place, to awaken in a strange bed, to be among strangers! To have dispelled, as by sudden magic, the old environment! It is on the scoring of such points as these that I preen myself, and my memory is always ringing the 'changes' I have had, complacently, as a man jingles silver in his pocket.
The negative answer to these mental interrogatives though only conjectural was the bitterest reflection of all! Still stir not the vultures: only to preen their black plumes with fetid beak; or, extending their broad wings, to shadow the sunbeam from their bodies. It is the hour of noon; and the sun, shining down from the zenith, permeates the atmosphere with his sultriest rays.
Likewise, whenever he had returned an answer of any kind, he would go on repeating the same in a whisper, as though he were seeking to justify what he had just said. And if he happened to have returned a good answer, he would begin to preen himself, and to straighten his waistcoat, frockcoat and tie, and to assume an air of conscious dignity.
See how they duck their heads, and stretch their long wings in the air, and splash the water over one another; how they preen their feathers and rise on the surface, shaking themselves. Here comes a trio of late starters, flying up from the sea. They hover overhead a moment, crying out to the crowd below, which answers them with a general shout and a flutter of excitement.
It was a beautiful sight to see this bird hovering over the pool, turning from side to side by quick jerks of its tail, now showing its throat a gleaming emerald, now its shoulders a glistening amethyst, then darting beneath the water, and rising instantly, throw off a shower of spray from its quivering wings, and fly up to an overhanging bough and commence to preen its feathers.
Even in the house, as he sat by the fire in the evening, it would mount on his lap, nestle its head in his bosom, and preen his hair with its beak, as it was wont to do its own feathers. Even when he went out shooting, the goose followed like a dog, getting over the fences as well as he could himself. It is sad to think that gross superstition was the cause of the death of the faithful bird.
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