Birds and Nature Vol. 08, No. 3, October 1900: Illustrated by Color PhotographyVarious
History
Birds and Nature Vol. 08, No. 3, October 1900: Illustrated by Color Photography
Various
Birds -- Periodicals; Natural history -- Periodicals
It is delightful to watch them as drowsiness films their round,
bright, black eyes, and the dear old mother croons them under her
ample wings, and they nestle in perfect harmony. How they manage
to bestow themselves with such limited accommodations, or how they
manage to breathe in a room so close, it is difficult to imagine.
They certainly deal a staggering blow to our preconceived notions
of the necessity of oxygen and ventilation, but they make it easy
to see whence the Germans derived their fashion of sleeping under
feather beds. But breathe and bestow themselves they do. The deep
mother breast and the broad mother wings take them all in.
They penetrate her feathers, and open for themselves unseen little
doors into the mysterious, brooding, beckoning darkness. But it
is long before they can arrange themselves satisfactorily. They
chirp, and stir, and snuggle, trying to find the softest and
warmest nook. Now, an uneasy head is thrust out, and now a whole
tiny body; but it soon re-enters in another quarter, and at length
the stir and chirp grows still. You see only a collection of
little legs, as if the hen were a banyan tree, and presently even
they disappear. She settles down comfortably and all are wrapped
in a slumberous silence.
And as I sit by the hour, watching their winning ways, and see
all the steps of this sleepy subsidence, I can but remember that
outburst of love and sorrow from the lips of Him who, though He
came to earth from a dwelling place of ineffable glory, called
nothing unclean because it was common, found no homely detail
too homely or too trivial to illustrate the Father's love; but
from the birds of the air, the fish of the sea, the lilies of
the field, the stones in the street, the foxes in their holes,
the patch on the coat, the oxen in the furrow, the sheep in the
pit, the camel under his burden, drew lessons of divine pity and
patience, of heavenly duty and delight."
BOB WHITE.
Who's whistling so cheerfully down in the clover,
When the meadows are wet with the sweet morning dew?
He's piping and calling, this ardent young lover,
And telling his tale the whole morning through,
What is it he says in the early sunlight?
"Bob White! Bob White!
Bob--Bob White!"
At noon, when the day god in wrath has descended,
With his swift golden arrows, on grain-field and hill;
And the birds of the morning their love songs have ended,
Then deep in the wood, and down by the rill
I hear a shrill whistle, so cheerful and bright:
"Wheat ripe? Bob White!
Not--not quite!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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