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Updated: May 2, 2025
The turkeys, heeding the tocsin of alarm from their leader, sought the shelter of the deeper undergrowth; the squirrels dropped their nuts and found refuge in the topmost branches of the tree which they had just pilfered; but the redbird, undisturbed, went on with his caroling, too confident in his own beauty and the charm of his song to fear any intruder.
Among our acquaintances was a lame redbird who at one time had been trapped and made a prisoner, confined behind the bars of a wire cell for many weeks and months. Luckily he made his escape one day when his grated door was accidentally opened, and he speedily made his way back to his dearly loved forest.
The redbird, like the unclaimed blood of Abel, flew to the little trees that grew low, as if to cover Abel's altar; the jack-snipe chirped in the swampy spots, like a divinity student, on his clean, long legs, probing with his bill and critical eye the Scriptures of the fields; the quail piped like an old bachelor with family cares at last, as he led his mate where the wild seeds were best; and through the air darted voices of birds forsaken or on doctor's errands, crying "Phoebe?
He robbed the Redbreast of his ruddy vest, the Hoopoe of his crown, and he secured a swallow-tail which he had long coveted. He took some rosy-redness from the Flamingo, the gilding of the Goldfinch, the gray down of an Eider-Duck. He burgled the Bluebird and the Redbird and the Yellowbird; and not one single feathered creature escaped his clever beak.
The redbird can never be reconciled to confinement; he is of the forest; the wildness of his peculiar note indicates the restlessness of his nature. So for nearly a year the melancholy twittering and the fluttering of that caged bird haunted me. One morning it was in the gracious May time I awoke early. The sun was just coming up and was kissing the tears from lovely Nature's face.
The scarlet tanager is red, too, but it has black wings, and it isn't called a redbird; and the crossbill is red, with a few white feathers, and it isn't called a redbird either. Only the cardinal grosbeak is. That was what you saw," she repeated. "And who told you all this?" I queried. "Nobody," the little girl made reply. "I looked it up in the library." She was only ten.
"Mercy, no!" said the Jay; "for he sings too late; I sing well enough for to please my Mate." There was once a little Bird so full of Song That he sang in the Rose-Bush the whole Night long. Then "Oh," said the Redbird to the Crow, "Don't you wish you could sit and sing just so?" "Do hush," said the Crow, "or I'll start for to weep, Be caw caw cause he's a-losing of his sleep."
"P'aps it had a few white feathers in its wings?" she hinted. "I believe not," I said. "Then," she observed, with an air of finality, "it was a cardinal grosbeak; and the other name for that is redbird; so you saw a redbird.
Not long after I had been so earnestly assured that the scarlet bird I had seen was a redbird, I made occasion to go to the library in which the information had been gathered. It was such a public library as may be seen in very nearly every small city in the United States.
On we went through the deep wooded lanes where the redbird stepped about in his long crimson coat, jerring at the wren, who worked in the deep thicket as though the Master Builder had gone away to kingdom come and left her behind to finish the world.
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