Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: September 13, 2025
Rain or shine, day or night, these white-throated sparrows are the sunniest, cheeriest folk to be found anywhere in the woods. I grew to understand and love the Milicete name, Killooleet, Little Sweet-Voice, for its expressiveness. "Hour-Bird" the Micmacs call him; for they say he sings every hour, and so tells the time, "all same's one white man's watch."
The resemblance ceased, however, with the opening notes, for the western bird did not add the sweet, rhythmic triad of his white-throated cousin, the closing part of his song being only a somewhat labored trill of no distinct character, and not fulfilling the promise of his initial strain.
Bernard, chose the rug as a comfortable place for finishing his morning toilet. Olive presently joined the group. The Doctor took the dead White-throated Sparrow from the table, and began to walk about the room, stopping now in front of the fire and then by the window.
Their everyday lives are spent under the shadow of the temple whither you dare not bend your footsteps. The intimacy of occult things isolates also these wise little birds. The North speaks, however, only in the voices of three the two thrushes, and the white-throated sparrow. You must hear these each at his proper time. The hermit thrush you will rarely see.
They are true seed-eating birds, and their beaks are short, stout, and thick cone-shaped it is called, like that of the White-throated Sparrow you learned about one day. This enables them to crack the various seeds upon which they live at all times except in the nesting season, when few seeds are ripe.
A white-throated sparrow, the first of the season, on his way to the woods beyond the St. Lawrence, whistled so clearly and tenderly that it seemed as if he were repeating to these two gray-haired exiles the name of their homeland. "Sweet sweet Canada, Canada, Canada!" But there was a sweeter sound than that in the quiet room.
By this time all the company had gathered round us in a circle, the shirt-fronted men, and the white-throated women, some awed, some critical, as though it were something between a religious ceremony and a conjurer's entertainment. A red velvet arm-chair had been pushed into the centre, and Agatha lay back in it, a little flushed and trembling slightly from excitement.
As the whirling winds of winter's edge strip the trees bare of their last leaves, the leaden sky of the eleventh month seems to push its cold face closer to earth. Who can tell when the northern sparrows first arrive? A whirl of brown leaves scatters in front of us; some fall back to earth; others rise and perch in the thick briers, sombre little white-throated and tree sparrows!
Distant crashes, single and impressive; stealthy footsteps near at hand; the subdued scratching of claws; a faint sniff! sniff! sniff! of inquiry; the sudden clear tin-horn ko-ko-ko-oh of the little owl; the mournful, long-drawn-out cry of the loon, instinct with the spirit of loneliness; the ethereal call-note of the birds of passage high in the air; a patter, patter, patter among the dead leaves, immediately stilled; and then at the last, from the thicket close at hand, the beautiful silver purity of the white-throated sparrow the nightingale of the North trembling with the ecstasy of beauty, as though a shimmering moonbeam had turned to sound; and all the while the blurred figure of the moon mounting to the ridge-line of your tent these things combine subtly, until at last the great Silence of which they are a part overarches the night and draws you forth to contemplation.
"Come up to Orchard Farm by nine o'clock, Rap, and we will begin our lessons with this little White-throated Sparrow Nat has found." "And uncle!" cried Dodo, "you must make inch measures on our middle fingers with violet ink, the way you did to Olive's when she was little."
Word Of The Day
Others Looking