Once he came quite
close over my head; I saw plainly his hook'd bill and hard restless
eyes.
BIRD-WHISTLING
How much music (wild, simple, savage, doubtless, but so tart-sweet,)
there is in mere whistling. It is four-fifths of the utterance of
birds. There are all sorts and styles. For the last half-hour, now,
while I have been sitting here, some feather'd fellow away off in the
bushes has been repeating over and over again what I may call a kind
of throbbing whistle. And now a bird about the robin size has just
appear'd, all mulberry red, flitting among the bushes--head, wings,
body, deep red, not very bright--no song, as I have heard. _4.
o'clock_: There is a real concert going on around me--a dozen
different birds pitching in with a will. There have been occasional
rains, and the growths all show its vivifying influences. As I finish
this, seated on a log close by the pond-edge, much chirping and
trilling in the distance, and a feather'd recluse in the woods near by
is singing deliciously--not many notes, but full of music of almost
human sympathy--continuing for a long, long while.
HORSE-MINT
_Aug. 22_.--Not a human being, and hardly the evidence of one, in
sight. After my brief semi-daily bath, I sit here for a bit, the brook
musically brawling, to the chromatic tones of a fretful cat-bird
somewhere off in the bushes. On my walk hither two hours since,
through fields and the old lane, I stopt to view, now the sky, now
the mile-off woods on the hill, and now the apple orchards.
Pages:
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195