22 HOMING WITH THE BIRDS 



regard for the laws of nature, which, even when 

 very young, I seemed dimly to realize and stoutly 

 to maintain; for the worst hawk or owl was quite 

 as dear to me and fully as interesting as the most 

 exquisitely coloured and ecstatic singer. He must 

 have realized that the gift would not be perfect 

 to me if there were exemptions, so he gave me for 

 my very own not only the birds of free, wild flight 

 with flaming colour and thrilling song, with nests 

 of wonder, jewels of eggs, and queer little babies, 

 but also the high flying, wide winged denizens of 

 the big woods, which homed in hollow trees and 

 on large branches, far removed from any per- 

 sonal contact I might ever hope to have with 

 them. 



Such is the natural greed of human nature that 

 even while he was talking to me I was making a 

 flashing mental inventory of my property, for now 

 I owned the hummingbirds, dressed in green satin 

 with ruby jewels on their throats; the plucky little 

 brown wren that sang by the hour to his mate 

 from the top of the pump, even in a hard rain; 

 the green warbler, nesting in a magnificent speci- 

 men of wild sweetbriar beside the back porch; 

 and the song sparrow in the ground cedar beside 

 the fence. The bluebirds, with their breasts of 

 earth's brown and their backs of Heaven's deepest 

 blue; the robin, the pain song of which my father 

 loved more than llie notes of any oilier bird, be- 

 longed to me. The flaming cardinal and his 



