A GIFT OF THE BIRDS 23 



Quaker mate, keeping house on a flat limb within 

 ten feet of our front door, were mine; and every 

 bird of the black silk throng that lived in the top 

 branches of four big evergreens in front of our 

 home was mine. The oriole, spilling notes of mol- 

 ten sweetness, as it shot like a ray of detached 

 sunshine to its nest in the chestnut tree across the 

 road was mine; while down beside the north creek, 

 on a top branch of a willow sheltering an immense 

 bed of blue calamus, nested a blood-red tanager, 

 with black velvet wings. Every person visiting 

 our family was taken to see him. With what pride 

 I contemplated my next personally conducted trip 

 to that tree to show the bird of blood-red! Now 

 I owned the pewees in their marvellous little nest 

 under the pig-pen roof, the song sparrow and the 

 indigo finches of the privet bush at the foot of 

 the garden, the swifts of our living room chimney, 

 the swallows on the barn rafters, and the martins 

 under the eaves. When it came to the orchard 

 with its fruit trees and its shrub -filled snake fence 

 corners of bloom and berries, I could not even 

 begin to enumerate thevireos and bluebirds, the cat- 

 birds, robins, jays, and thrushes. Mine, too, was 

 the friendly, delicately coloured cuckoo, slipping 

 through the shrub -filled fence corners and bushes 

 of the woods pasture, with his never failing pre- 

 diction of rain. I remember that in the first 

 moment of tumultuous joy, one thought was to 

 hope that a storm would come soon so that I 



