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Kauc, indeed, was not now quite comfortable in his position, but kept slyly glancing up at the missel-thrush, and would have gone elsewhere had it not been that everybody was looking. The wood-pigeon came to the hawthorn, some little way from the castle; he represented, and was the chief of those pigeons who dwelt peacefully in Kapchack's kingdom, although aliens by race.
There was one one day whistling with all his might on the lower branch of an elm, at the very roadside, and just above him a wood-pigeon was perched. Goldfinches come by occasionally, not often, but still they do come. The rarest bird seems to be the bullfinch. I have only seen bullfinches three or four times in three seasons, and then only a pair.
The click and swish blended with the rustle of the willows and the poplars, and the cooing of a wood-pigeon, in a true river song. Alongside, in the deep green water, weeds, like yellow snakes, were writhing and nosing with the current; pied cattle on the farther side stood in the shade lazily swishing their tails. It was an afternoon to dream.
Think of the dexterity, coolness and stealth required to manage such a weapon in a jungle so dense and tangled that white sportsmen often find a difficulty in handling their guns there! The silent adroitness needed to approach and spear the wild parrot or wood-pigeon without stirring the branch of a tree would alone require a long apprenticeship to wood-craft.
Of course the wood-pigeon is only one of many birds that make this annual tour, taking, as the rest do, a "return ticket." Now the ramiers of France, in passing southward, must ply their wings a little more strenuously to mount over the snowy summits of the Pyrenees; but they only commence ascending to this higher elevation when near the mountains.
"A word, only a word!" cried a fresh, boyish voice, then two hands were loudly clapped and a gay laugh echoed through the forest. Hitherto silence had reigned under the boughs of the pines and tops of the beeches, but now a wood-pigeon joined in the lad's laugh, and a jay, startled by the clapping of hands, spread its brown wings, delicately flecked with blue, and soared from one pine to another.
Peter became very clever at helping the birds to build their nests; soon he could build better than a wood-pigeon, and nearly as well as a blackbird, though never did he satisfy the finches, and he made nice little water-troughs near the nests and dug up worms for the young ones with his fingers.
I often wept there, I never laughed. "More than once I felt involuntary terrors as I heard overhead the dull hum of the wings of some hurrying wood-pigeon.
"Criss-cross, criss-cross, so," interrupted the Wood-Pigeon. "I know. That will do-o-o, that will do-o-o!" Mother Magpie hopped up and down on one leg, so angry she could hardly croak. "You silly Pigeon," she sputtered, "not so. You are spoiling your nest. Place the sticks so!" "I know, I know!
That bulging forehead, distended with useful information; that massive chin; those eyes, gleaming behind their spectacles; that tout ensemble; that je ne sais quoi. In a word, Clarence! He could do everything that the Boy Scout must learn to do. He could low like a bull. He could gurgle like a wood-pigeon. He could imitate the cry of the turnip in order to deceive rabbits.
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