Gray Lady and the Birds: Stories of the Bird Year for Home and SchoolWright, Mabel Osgood
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Gray Lady and the Birds: Stories of the Bird Year for Home and School
Wright, Mabel Osgood
Birds -- Juvenile literature; Birds -- New England
“Where?” said Goldilocks; “yes; I see. One is a little, fluffy, greenish
gray bird with a dirty white breast. Oh! he has a red stripe edged with
yellow on top of his head! He moves so quickly that I can’t seem to see
the whole of him with one look, though he is small. The other bird is a
little bigger, and not so fat; he has a yellow spot on his head, and a
brighter one over the tail, and a yellow spot on each side; he is
striped gray and black all over, except some white on his wings and
underneath. How he flits about, just like that bird that looked like a
red-and-black butterfly that we saw last summer that you said was a
Redstart.”
“You have very sharp eyes,” said her mother, “for you saw at once the
identifying marks of two birds that were new to you. The merry fellow of
the flaming crown is the Golden-crowned Kinglet, another sturdy winter
visitor, who breeds in the North, and finds our climate quite warm
enough for him if the food holds out; for he is a tree trapper, giving
his attention, like the Chickadee, to the smaller branches and twigs too
slender to bear the weight of the heavier tree-trunk birds.
“His companion is the Myrtle or Yellow-rumped Warbler, a hardy cousin of
the Redstart and Summer Yellowbird that Sarah, perhaps, does not yet
know by name, though she has doubtless seen them. When you have once
seen the male bird, you will never forget him, because of the four
yellow spots. These warblers are great insect eaters, but lacking these,
they will eat berries, the bayberries being their favourite, and I
believe that we have to thank the bayberry bushes, in the rocky hill
pastures hereabouts, for the numbers of the Myrtle Warblers that stay
all winter, myrtle being a common title for the bay, giving them their
name.”
[Illustration: F. M. Chapman, Photo. SHELTER FOR BIRD FOOD]
At the garden end of Birdland, just inside the rustic gate, a flock of
Juncoes or Gray Snowbirds were feeding, plump, cheerful, and contented,
and giving vent to their satisfaction in their pleasant “tchip, tchip,
tchip” call. Those who only know one winter bird know the Junco, for he
belongs to city parks, village yards, and remote farms alike, anywhere
that a frugal meal of grain or weed seeds may be found, with a piazza
vine or brush-heap or haystack to creep into for shelter. His flesh-pink
bill, slate-coloured coat, and neat white vest, together with the _two
conspicuous white tail-feathers_, tell his name to any one who wishes to
know it.
The Junco is an autumn and winter visitor only, being away from May
until late September, as he nests northward from New York and
Connecticut. When the flocks first return, you will be puzzled by many
birds of the shape and build of Juncoes, but who are wearing more or
less striped clothes; these are the young of the year.
“Five new birds in one morning! I wish Tommy had been here,” said Sarah;
“but perhaps he knows them already; Tommy knows a lot you can’t see
because it’s down so deep.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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