. Wild life near home . er heard a bird sing when interror; but I had whistled my way past toomany dogs and through too many graveyardsat night to be deceived in the note of fear, andin the purpose of this song. That bit of ahusband was scared almost out of his senses;but there he stood, squarely between me andthat precious nest and the more precious wife,guarding them from my evil eyes with everyatom of his midget self. It was as fine an illustration of courage as Iever saw, a triumph of love and duty over fear—fear that perhaps we have no way to it was a triumph of wedded love at
. Wild life near home . er heard a bird sing when interror; but I had whistled my way past toomany dogs and through too many graveyardsat night to be deceived in the note of fear, andin the purpose of this song. That bit of ahusband was scared almost out of his senses;but there he stood, squarely between me andthat precious nest and the more precious wife,guarding them from my evil eyes with everyatom of his midget self. It was as fine an illustration of courage as Iever saw, a triumph of love and duty over fear—fear that perhaps we have no way to it was a triumph of wedded love at that;for there were no young, not even an egg in theunfinished nest. It all happened in less than aminute. The female reappeared in an instant,satisfied that all was well with the nest, and bothbirds sped off and dropped among the briers. How would the casuist decide for so sweet, sobig, so heroic a deception—or the attempt?[198] A little farther dowu the ereek, where themeadows meet the marsh, dwell the cousins of. A triumph of love and fluty over fear. the winter wrens, the long-billed in the wide reaches of calamus and leeds,where the brackish tide comes in, the marsh-wrens build by hundreds. Their big, Imlkynests are woven about a handful of young cala-nms-blades, or tied to a few long, stout sedge-stalks, and grow as the season gi-ows.[199] The nests are made of coarse marsh-grass,—ofthe floatage often,—and are so long in the pro-cess of construction that, when completed, theyare all speared through with the grass-blades, aswith so many green bayonets. They are aboutthe size of a large calabash, nearly round, thick-walled and heavy, with a small entrance, justunder the roof, leading upward like a shortstair to a deep, pocket-like cavity, at whosebottom lie the eggs, barely out of finger reach. I could hear the smothered racket of thesinging wrens all about me in the dense growth,scoldings to my right, defiance to my left, dis-cussions of wives, g
Size: 1595px × 1566px
Photo credit: © Reading Room 2020 / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1900, booksubjectbirds, bookyear1901
