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A pair of redbirds came and went flashes of scarlet against the whiteness of a blossoming dogwood-tree. Far away the squalling of a catbird mingled with the mellow cadences of the mountain stream. There was the sound of laughter, too, and the chatter of gay voices in the distance, where the young people fished from the banks. Judy could just see them through an opening in the pines.
"Got news for you, Maria," he called from the well, where he was making a pretense of thirst. "Oh I don't know," answered Maria, with a superior smile. "If it's about the redbirds, he's been up to the garden three times this morning yellin', 'See here! fit to split; an' I jest figured that their little ones had hatched. Is that your news?" "Well I be durned!" gasped the astonished Abram.
The sky was a glory, the Wilderness rolled in emerald waves, the redbirds sang. Lee and the 2d Corps were yet two miles apart. Between was Chancellorsville, and all the strong entrenchments and the great blue guns, and Hooker's courageous men. Now followed Jeb Stuart's fight.
Sand-pipers went fearlessly about among them, bobbing their little tails with nervous vehemence; redbirds trilled their good-nights in the tree-tops; and, daintily wading in the sandy shallows, object lessons in patience, were great blue herons, carefully peering for the prey which never seems to be found.
Morris counted out the money, and the man went back to his home doubtless wishing he had a hundred more redbirds to sell at the same handsome profit. After he had gone, Mr. Morris went to a box hanging against the wall, and turning a handle began talking to the box as if it were a human being. Though it was just a plain wooden box, the admiral said there was something mysterious about it, for Mr.
The wood thrush and the hermit stand at the head as songsters, no two persons, perhaps, agreeing as to which is the superior. Under the general head of finches, Audubon describes over sixty different birds, ranging from the sparrows to the grosbeaks, and including the buntings, the linnets, the snowbirds, the crossbills, and the redbirds.
Snowflakes were beginning to fall and whisper about the great bamboo vines; twisted around the trees upon the river banks, the long gray moss hung motionless and a thick grayness seemed to shut out the whole world; all about me was gray, earth, sky, trees, barn, everything, except the redbirds and the red berries of a great holly tree under whose shelter I stood, listening to the whispering snowflakes.
Excited redbirds darted among the bushes, and the Harvester answered their cry. Blackbirds protested against the unusual intrusion of strange objects, and a brown thrush slipped from a late nest close the road wailing in anxiety.
He is not bumptious nor self-assertive, like many others; he rarely teases, and is altogether a well-mannered and proper young person. After a while, as the youngsters learned strength and speed on the wing, they came to the table with the grown-ups, and then I saw there were three spruce young redbirds, all under the care of their gorgeous papa.
There were mocking-birds, the most attractive of all birds, and blue grosbeaks, and cardinals and summer redbirds, instead of scarlet tanagers, and those wonderful singers the Bewick's wrens, and Carolina wrens. All these I was able to show John Burroughs when he came to visit us; although, by the way, he did not appreciate as much as we did one set of inmates of the cottage the flying squirrels.
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