File:Song birds and seasons (1888) (14728389736).jpg

Identifier: songbirdsseasons00theu (find matches)
Title: Song birds and seasons
Year: 1888 (1880s)
Authors: Theuriet, André, 1833-1907
Subjects: Birds
Publisher: Boston : Estes and Lauriat
Contributing Library: University of California Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Internet Archive

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cd out in the garden ; we could now open our win-dow and inhale with lapture the first balmy breezes ofspring. Spring is the season when in our mountainous regionswild bullfinches begin to fly about in couples. Theypair in April and build their nests in hedges. These aremade of moss on the outside, of feathers on the inside ;the female lays five or six bluish-white eggs spotted withviolet on this soft bed. When the young ones are hatchedand sufficiently feathered, the father and mother takethem across the country, sometimes to blooming vines,sonietinies to orchards filled with cherries, or else theyfly about the skiits of a wood. The whole family leadsthis sort of vagrant life until the latter end of autumn,picking at ears of corn, devouring the fruit of the sloe-tree, as well as blackberries and dog-wood, disbuddingaspen-trees, alders and sorbs ; whistling, calling andanswering each other, intoxicating themselves with airand sunshine. I do not know whether my bullfinch (a male) had a
Text Appearing After Image:
THE BULLFINCH THl- BULT.FTXCH 139 vague sort of inner presentiment of ;ill these things, l)utas April w as making Nature green and tlie air was gettingwarmer, it became more restless and more turbulent. Itwould leave its cage more willingly, fluttering impatientlyabout the room, hanging on the window-sill or beatinglightly against the panes with its bill. Surely some mysterious instinct had been telling mvcompanion about the budding hedges and the free bull-finches who were making love to each other in the pleasantsunlight. It cared no longer for its food, although it wasgenerally very much of an epicure; it disdained its hemj)-seed and biscuit; it had only one object in view : thewindow ; it would spend hours there as if in a dieam,looking at the trees, whose new leaves the wind wasshaking, and which appeared just above the opposite wallbeyond. Then another fit of frenzy would seize it; itwould pick again at the window-panes, repeatediv utter-ing a low cry which seemed to say : \Miy

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