File:American ornithology for the home and school (1902) (14563525019).jpg

Identifier: americanornithol21902reed (find matches)
Title: American ornithology for the home and school
Year: 1901 (1900s)
Authors: Reed, Chester A. (Chester Albert), 1876-1912
Subjects: Birds
Publisher: Worcester, Mass. : C.K. Reed
Contributing Library: Smithsonian Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Smithsonian Libraries

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more and more strength until he has raised them erect. Then he testsone leg after another, thrusting them out doubtfully, as though theymight be numb with cramp, but apparently gaining confidence witheach new eiTort. Already he seems like a new creature, and I knowthat before my return he will have flown away in search of food orothers of his kind. Along the way are curious little finger-size plants, which rise fromthe ground and curl their fuzzy yellow-green tips into tight balls. Thecountry folk call them brakes, perhaps because they break at theslightest touch, and they gather and eat them as greens. A fewmore warm days and the tightly closed balls will unwind and straightenout into delicate, feathery fronds of graceful ferns. They are scatter-ed thickly along the way, especially in places that have been burnedover the year before, waiting with bowed shoulders and coldly claspedhands for the warm days, which the blue birds have told them willsoon come. A ME RICA N ORNITHO LOGY. 149
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One of these blue birds iswatching me now, ahnost witha fellow feeling and understand-ing it seems, for he is first onone side and then on the other,hopping from the swelling tipof an alder bush to the ground,running across the path behindme, and then flying on with awell modulated I, I say, lookat this, to a decayed log a rodor so in advance. Surely he knows that I am out to greet the newcomers forwhom he has been watching these weeks past, andjust as surely he realizes that he is able to give mean abundance of interesting information. What acompanionable little fellow he is, and how plainly de-sirous of congenial company. I wonder if he has a mate, or if he hasnot yet begun his courting. Perhaps he has daringly come on aheadof all the rest, and is lonely and glad even for a human being to com-panion with. Or perhaps this warm, wondrous thrill of the awaken-ing is in his heart, as it is in mine, and he feels nothing but love andfellowship for all things around. As I approach nearer,

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