United States or Norfolk Island ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Companies of redpolls and crossbills pass chirping through the thickets, busily seeking their food. The fearless, familiar chickadee repeats his name merrily, while he leads his family to explore every nook and cranny of the wood. Cedar wax-wings, sociable wanderers, arrive in numerous flocks.
And somehow he felt better for having made the acquaintance of the Redpolls. It was the feeling that everybody so fortunate as to meet them on a gold winter's day is sure to have. While it is true that Peter Rabbit likes winter, it is also true that life is anything but easy for him that season.
If I have described them so that you would know them, please write me their names." There can be little doubt but the young observer had, seen a pair of redpolls, a bird related to the goldfinch, and that occasionally comes down to us in the winter from the far north.
Still others are seen only in winter, as the brown and shore larks, the crossbills, redpolls, snow-buntings, pine grosbeak, and some of the hawks and owls; and of these some are merely accidental, as the pine grosbeak, which in 1836 appeared here in great numbers in October, and remained until May.
But they were not goldfinches. Oh, my, no! For they were dressed in gray, with darker gray stripes at their sides; and when they scrambled twittering down low enough to show their heads in the sunlight, they could be seen to be wearing the loveliest of crimson caps, and some of them had rosy breasts. The redpolls had come!
And each of the embattled kings, Jack-frost and Sombre-pine, has his children in abundance to possess the land as he wins it. Right up to the skirmish line are they. The low thickets of the woods are swarming with Tree-sparrows, Redpolls, Robins, Hooded Sparrows, and the bare plains, a few yards away, are peopled and vocal with birds to whom a bush is an abomination.
Word Of The Day