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Updated: May 5, 2025
Distant redwings gave their celebrated imitation of a great multitude. Bluebirds warbled on the wing. The busier chickadees and creepers searched the twigs and trunks, interpolating occasional remarks. The sun slanted through the forest. Bob strode on vigorously.
Such as these they flaunt not, but wear for choiceness. You would not see them unless you knew them there. For denizens they have the hare, the fox, and the badger. Redwings, wheatears, peewits, and airy kestrels are the people of their skies. I love above all the solitude they keep, and to feel the pulsing of the untenanted air.
"The Redwings are sociable birds, nesting in small colonies, and when once settled they never seem to stray far from home. The nest is a thick pocket hung either between reeds over the water, or fixed to the upright stems of a bush, quite near the ground, if the place is very marshy.
I wish they would glitter, some of these steeples or some of our roofs, and so light up the reddish brown of the elms and the grey lichened oaks. The very rooks are black, and the starlings and the wintry fieldfares and redwings have no colour at a distance. They say the metal roofs and domes gleam in Russia, and even in France, and why not in our rare sunshine?
"Let us advance and attack at once, for every day swells the ranks of Choo Hoo's army, and should there be early frosts it would be so largely increased that the mere numbers must push us back. Besides which in a short time he will receive large reinforcements, for his allies, the fieldfares and redwings, are preparing to set sail across the sea hither.
Starlings were not at all plentiful; blackbirds and thrushes were there, but not nearly so numerous as is usually the case; fieldfares and redwings drifted by in the winter, but never stopped. Slow-worms lived in the sand under the heath, and lizards, but no snakes and only a few adders.
While the water-snake was spreading himself, a small hawk, a sharp-shinned, I think, came beating over the meadow and was met by a vigilance committee of red-shouldered blackbirds. He did not stop to eat any of them, but darted up, and they after him. On up he went, round and round in a rapid, mounting spiral, till only one of the daring redwings followed. I watched.
To judge only by their notes, they should belong to the Croaking Birds, and not to the Singers at all; but they have a regular music-box in the throat, only it is out of order, and won't play tunes. Like the Redwings, they also nest in colonies, either in old orchards, cedar thickets, or among pines; the rest of the year, too, they keep in flocks.
This is the time to watch for the lines of ducks crossing the sky, and be ready to find black ducks in the oddest places even in insignificant rain pools deep in the woods. In the early spring the great flocks of grackles and redwings return, among the first to arrive as they were the last to leave for the South.
Certain flocks, however, keep together, and all build their nests in a particular swamp or wood, and sometimes, it is said, male birds build nests to sleep in while the females are sitting. The Redwings nest in colonies; so do the Herons, who eat frogs and nest near water, and the little brown-cloaked Bank Swallows, who live in holes that they dig for themselves in high banks."
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