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What sound or sign, what murmur of wind in the pines, or lap of ripples on the shore, or song of the veery at twilight made them pause and say, Here is the place? How does he know, he whose thoughts are all of life, and who never looked on death, where the great silent herd is that no caribou ever sees but once?
They come closer still, and make our homes their own. They take the grossest liberties. I am fond of birds, but I think the line must be drawn somewhere. The clothes-line, for instance. The other day Titania sent me out to put up a new clothesline; I found that a shrike or a barn swallow or some other veery had built a nest in the clothespin basket.
Our thrushes are all frank, open-mannered birds; but the veery and the hermit build upon the ground, where they at least escape the crows, owls, and jays, and stand a better chance to be overlooked, by the red squirrel and weasel also; while the robin seeks the protection of dwellings and out-buildings. For years I have not known the nest of a wood-thrush to succeed.
When one is in a thoughtful mood, the songs of the Wood-Thrush and the Veery surpass all others on their delightful influence; and when I am strolling in the solitary pastures, it seems to me that nothing can exceed the simple melody of the Wood-Sparrow.
But the ordinary observer seldom attains farther than to comprehend some of the cries of anxiety and fear around him, often so unlike the accustomed carol of the bird, as the mew of the Cat-Bird, the lamb-like bleating of the Veery and his impatient yeoick, the chaip of the Meadow-Lark, the towyee of the Chewink, the petulant psit and tsee of the Red-Winged Blackbird, and the hoarse cooing of the Bobolink.
He was not in the least dismayed; he perched on a twig and looked over at me with interest, as if trying to see what the veery found so terrifying, and then continued on his way home.
A stranger would probably recognize melody and a wild woodsy quality in the flutings of the veery thrush; but how much more they would mean to him after he had spent many successive Junes threading our northern trout-streams and encamping on their banks!
After that the child was taken away to a convent, and the rich children called her 'la pauvre petite, shared their saints'-days' gifts with her, and bought her candles that she might make a novena to bring her father back again. But 'twas her mother it brought instead." Patsy stopped again to listen to the veery; he was not singing alone now, and she smiled wistfully.
She perched on a tree over our heads, and uttered the mournful veery cry; and though I did not so much as lay a finger on that nest, I believe she deserted it at that moment, for several days afterward it was found exactly as on that day, with its one egg cold and abandoned.
Two cedar birds, with the policy of peace which their Quaker garb suggests, betook themselves to a safe distance, a cat-bird went to the tree to interview the clamorous stranger, a vireo made its appearance on the branches, and followed the big baby in blue from perch to perch, looking at him with great curiosity, while a veery uttered his plaintive cry from the fence below.
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