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Updated: May 27, 2025
During all the spring season, and particularly while the young are being provided for, the red-wings subsist almost exclusively on worms, grubs, caterpillars and a great variety of such sluggish insects and their voracious larvæ as do great damage to the roots and early sprouts of whatever the farmer plants, nor do they abandon this diet until the ripening of the wild rice and maize in the fall.
Tops of gates and hedges appeared above the flood, and sea-gulls, driven inland by the gales, swam over the pastures. Flocks of peewits, starlings, and red-wings collected on the uplands, and an occasional heron might be seen flitting majestically across the storm-flecked sky.
The red-wings are among the earliest of our spring visitors, and south of the Ohio River and Washington may be found all through the winter. Their loud and rollicking spring note is familiar to every one in the country.
They all lunched together in the shade of a wild crab thicket, with flowers spread at their feet, and the gold orioles streaking the air with flashes of light and trailing ecstasy behind them, while the red-wings, as always, asked the most impertinent questions. Then Mrs. Comstock carried the basket back to the cabin, and Philip and Elnora sat on a log, resting a few minutes.
On the lake wild life splashed and chattered incessantly, and sometimes the Harvester paused and stood with arms heaped with leaves, to interpret some unusually appealing note of pain or anger or some very attractive melody. The red-wings were swarming, the killdeers busy, and he thought of the Dream Girl and smiled. "I wonder if she would like this," he mused.
No cunning of glance could see through it; it would have needed a ladder to help any one look over. It was between the may and the June roses. The may bloom had fallen, and among the hawthorn boughs were the little green bunches that would feed the red-wings in autumn.
The day was perfect summer; it made the heart of reticent Bradley Talcott ache with the beauty of it every time his thoughts went up to the blue sky. The larks, and bobolinks, and red-wings made every meadow riotous with song, and the ever-alert king-birds and flickers flew along from post to post as if to have a part in the celebration.
The sun is now rising high above the pine-trees, the morning mist is also rising and rolling off like a golden veil as it catches those glorious rays the whole earth seems wakening into new life the dew has brightened every leaf and washed each tiny flower-cup the pines and balsams give out their resinous fragrance the aspens flutter and dance in the morning breeze and return a mimic shower of dew-drops to the stream the shores become lower and flatter the trees less lofty and more mossy the stream expands and wide beds of rushes spread out on either side what beds of snowy water-lilies how splendid the rose tint of those perseicarias that glow so brightly in the morning sun the rushes look like a green meadow, but the treacherous water lies deep below their grassy leaves the deer delights in these verdant aquatic fields, and see what flocks of red-wings rise from among them as the canoe passes near their bright shoulder-knots glance like flashes of lightning in the sun-beams.
The robins were only chirping now, for their morning songs had awakened all the other birds an hour ago. Scolding red-wings tilted on half the bushes. Excepting late species of haws, tree bloom was almost gone, but wild flowers made the path border and all the wood floor a riot of colour.
Nature's first great law is the perpetuation of species, and everything we see in the June woods and fields, from the giant white oak to the busy ant, is diligently obeying that law. The red-winged blackbird circles over our heads with sharp, anxious chirps, for we have disturbed the young red-wings down in the sedge who are taking their first lessons in flying.
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