Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 29, 2025
Behind the chapel extended, surrounded by two high hedges of hazel, elder and white thorn, and a deep ditch, the little inclosure uncultivated, though gay in its sterility; because the mosses there grew thick, wild heliotrope and ravenelles there mingled perfumes, while from beneath an ancient chestnut issued a crystal spring, a prisoner in its marble cistern, and on the thyme all around alighted thousands of bees from the neighboring plants, whilst chaffinches and redthroats sang cheerfully among the flower-spangled hedges.
That was a wonderful place, that garden, and I used to gaze over the high wall with its bristle of young shoots of plum-trees growing over the coping, and see the chaffinches building in the spring-time among the green leaves and milky-white blossoms of the pear-trees; or, perhaps, it would be in a handy fork of an apple-tree, with the crimson and pink blossoms all around.
Let it be our business to give it an opportunity of showing itself to affectionate eyes. May 10, 1878. I have just come back from a solitary walk. I heard nightingales, saw white lilac and orchard trees in bloom. My heart is full of impressions showered upon it by the chaffinches, the golden orioles, the grasshoppers, the hawthorns, and the primroses.
Because the son of the bird-catcher who imitates the call of his victims has been fed on roast Robins, Linnets and Chaffinches, shall we hastily conclude that this education through the stomach will enable him later, without other initiation than that of the spit, to know his way about the ornithological groups and to avoid confusing them when his turn comes to set his limed twigs?
This kept them off, just as thread keeps the chaffinches from the seed-beds in small gardens, and as it keeps the sparrows from the crocuses on lawn and ornamental grounds.
The singing linnets come in parties, the happy greenfinches, the streaked yellow-hammers, as if any one had delicately painted them in separate streaks, and not with a wash of colour, the brown buntings, chaffinches out they come from the hazel copses, where the nuts are dropping, and the hedge berries turning red, and every one finds something to his liking.
Sparrows innumerable were holding their noisy, high-spirited disputations; blackbirds were repeating and repeating that deep melodious love-call of theirs, which they have repeated from the beginning of the world, and no ear has ever tired of; finches were singing, greenfinches, chaffinches; thrushes were singing, singing ecstatically in the tree-tops, and lower down the imitative little blackcaps were trying to imitate them.
Behold us made companions of water-hens, snipes, goldfinches, woodpeckers, jays, owls, magpies, jackdaws, rooks, starlings, woodcocks, cocks, hens and chickens, turkey-cocks, blackbirds, thrushes, chaffinches, tomtits, jenny-wrens, lapwings, linnets, greenfinches, crossbills, flycatchers, larks, plovers, kingfishers, wagtails, redbreasts, redfinches, sparrows, ducks, fieldfares, woodpigeons and bullfinches!
His personages, active as apes, strong as bulls, gay as chaffinches, enter on the scene and talk abruptly, jump off roofs to the pavement, receive frightful wounds from which they recover, are believed to be dead, and yet reappear. There are trap-doors under the boards, antidotes, disguises; and all things get entangled, hurry along, and are finally unravelled without a minute for reflection.
Larks and chaffinches were everywhere in full song, and the sunshine had brought the honey-bees to the palm-willows which, during the last ten days, had changed their flower-buds from silver to gold. As Mary approached the farm she saw the first swallows of the season darting in tremulous flight across the meadows, and their presence cheered her.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking