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قراءة كتاب Birds in the Bush
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The Project Gutenberg eBook of Birds in the Bush, by Bradford Torrey
Title: Birds in the Bush
Author: Bradford Torrey
Release Date: February 7, 2009 [eBook #28019]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BIRDS IN THE BUSH***
E-text prepared by Robin Monks, Joseph Cooper, Leonard Johnson,
and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
(http://www.pgdp.net)
BIRDS IN THE BUSH
BY
BRADFORD TORREY
SIXTH EDITION
BOSTON
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
New York: 11 East Seventeenth Street
The Riverside Press, Cambridge
1893
Copyright, 1885,
By BRADFORD TORREY
All rights reserved.
The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A.
Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Company.
Wherefore, let me intreat you to read it with favour and attention, and to pardon us, wherein we may seem to come short of some words, which we have laboured to interpret.
The Prologue of the Wisdom of Jesus the Son of Sirach.
CONTENTS
| PAGE | |
| On Boston Common | 1 |
| Bird-Songs | 31 |
| Character in Feathers | 53 |
| In the White Mountains | 75 |
| Phillida and Coridon | 103 |
| Scraping Acquaintance | 129 |
| Minor Songsters | 155 |
| Winter Birds about Boston | 185 |
| A Bird-Lover's April | 211 |
| An Owl's Head Holiday | 243 |
| A Month's Music | 277 |
ON BOSTON COMMON.
And hermits are contented with their cells;
And students with their pensive citadels:
Maids at the wheel, the weaver at his loom,
Sit blithe and happy; bees that soar for bloom,
High as the highest Peak of Furness-fells,
Will murmur by the hour in foxglove bells:
In truth, the prison unto which we doom
Ourselves, no prison is: and hence for me,
In sundry moods 't was pastime to be bound
Within the Sonnet's scanty plot of ground;
Pleased if some Souls (for such there needs must be)
Who have felt the weight of too much liberty,
Should find brief solace there, as I have found.
Wordsworth.
ON BOSTON COMMON.
Our Common and Garden are not an ideal field of operations for the student of birds. No doubt they are rather straitened and public. Other things being equal, a modest ornithologist would prefer a place where he could stand still and look up without becoming himself a gazing-stock. But "it is not in man that walketh to direct his steps;" and if we are appointed to take our daily exercise in a city park, we shall very likely find its narrow limits not destitute of some partial compensations. This, at least, may be depended upon,—our disappointments will be on the right side of the account; we shall see more than we have anticipated rather than less, and so our pleasures will, as it were, come to us double. I recall, for example, the heightened interest with which I beheld my first Boston cat-bird; standing on the back of one of the seats in the Garden, steadying himself with oscillations of his tail,—a conveniently long balance-pole,—while he peeped curiously down into a geranium bed, within the leafy seclusion of which he presently disappeared. He was nothing but a cat-bird; if I had seen him in the country I should have passed him by without a second glance; but here, at the base of the Everett statue, he looked, somehow, like a bird of another feather. Since then, it is true, I have learned that his occasional presence with us in the season of the semi-annual migration is not a matter for astonishment. At that time, however, I was happily more ignorant; and therefore, as I say, my pleasure was twofold,—the pleasure, that is, of the bird's society and of the surprise.
There are plenty of people, I am aware, who assert that there are no longer any native birds in our city grounds,—or, at the most, only a few robins. Formerly things were different, they have heard, but now the abominable English sparrows monopolize every nook and corner. These wise