Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 25, 2025
In the renewed melody of the song-birds there was a hint of approaching evening; shadows lengthened; the sunlight grew redder on the dusty road. "The Broadalbin trail swings into the forest just ahead," said Dorothy, pointing with her whip-stock. "See, there where they are drawing bridle. But I mean to ride with you, nevertheless.... And I'll do it!"
I have never seen even a porcupine upon it; but I have a hill where one might roll down, should one ever come my way and be in the mood for that kind of play. I have a few possums, a woodchuck or two, an occasional skunk, some red squirrels and rabbits, and many kinds of song-birds. Foxes occasionally cross my acres; and once, at least, I saw a bald eagle devouring a fish in one of my apple-trees.
Summer sunshine has touched with its fiercely scorching breath, and winter snows have shrouded me in fleecy garments, but the old yew tree has weathered so far the storms of life, growing year by year more twisted and gnarled as time passed on. I have seen the song-birds come and depart; some have even built their nests within my leafy branches.
If it were not for the light railway none of these things would have been possible, and so I forgave it that it flew with a shriek round the base of the Purple Hill, setting all the mountains rattling with echoes, and disturbing the water fowl on the lakes and the song-birds in the woods, the eagle in his eyrie, and the wild red deer, to say nothing of the innumerable grouse and partridges and black cock and plover and hares and rabbits on the mountain-side.
In the South, the negroes and poor whites are killing song-birds, woodpeckers and doves for food; and in several states some of it is done under the authority of the laws. Look at these awful lists: * The killing of doves represents a great and widespread decline in the ethics of sportsmanship.
The first thing to see, looking away over the water, was a kind of dull line that was the woods on t'other side; you couldn't make nothing else out; then a pale place in the sky; then more paleness spreading around; then the river softened up away off, and warn't black any more, but gray; you could see little dark spots drifting along ever so far away trading scows, and such things; and long black streaks rafts; sometimes you could hear a sweep screaking; or jumbled up voices, it was so still, and sounds come so far; and by and by you could see a streak on the water which you know by the look of the streak that there's a snag there in a swift current which breaks on it and makes that streak look that way; and you see the mist curl up off of the water, and the east reddens up, and the river, and you make out a log-cabin in the edge of the woods, away on the bank on t'other side of the river, being a woodyard, likely, and piled by them cheats so you can throw a dog through it anywheres; then the nice breeze springs up, and comes fanning you from over there, so cool and fresh and sweet to smell on account of the woods and the flowers; but sometimes not that way, because they've left dead fish laying around, gars and such, and they do get pretty rank; and next you've got the full day, and everything smiling in the sun, and the song-birds just going it!
The sun at length shone forth brightly on the little settlement: the woods were alive with song-birds, numbers of which came fearlessly flying up as if to ascertain what the strangers had been about. Their notes were very sweet, though their plumage was somewhat sombre.
Just think of it, girls. Isn't it dreadful? Five million innocent, hard-working, beautiful birds killed, that thoughtless girls and women may ornament themselves with their little dead bodies. One million bobolinks have been killed in one month near Philadelphia. Seventy song-birds were sent from one Long Island village to New York milliners.
He was able to lay aside cool knowledge of the fight whereby all things live and, such was the desire of his mind, to partake of pleasure, to regard them as poets do and children and pitiful women: the birds as lumps of free delight, winged particles of joy. The song-birds were keen participants of sport, killing to eat, and bigger birds were killing them.
A sparrow with a very marked peculiarity of song I have heard several seasons in my own locality. But the birds do not all live to return to their old haunts: the bobolinks and starlings run a gauntlet of fire from the Hudson to the Savannah, and the robins and meadow-larks and other song-birds are shot by boys and pot-hunters in great numbers, to say nothing of their danger from hawks and owls.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking