222 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS 



it — and to its goldfinches, the Httle company of twelve 

 fluttering with anxious cries about my head, a very 

 charming spectacle, and to an even more brilliant picture 

 or vision of the past which was all at once restored to 

 my mental eye. We are familiar with the powerful 

 emotional effect of certain odours, associated with our 

 early life, in this connection; occasionally effects equally 

 strong are produced by sights and sounds, and this was 

 one. As I stood in the churchyard watching the small 

 flutterers in their black and gold and crimson liveries, 

 listening to their excited cries, a vision of my boyhood 

 was brought before me, so vivid as to seem like reality. 

 After many years I was a boy once more, in my own 

 distant home, and the time was October, when the 

 brilliant spring merges into hot summer. I was among 

 the wind-rustled tall Lombardy poplars, inhaling their 

 delicious smell, at that spot where a colony of a couple 

 of dozen black-headed siskins were breeding. They 

 are without the crimson on their faces; their plumage 

 is black and gold, but to all English-speaking people in 

 that far country they are known as goldfinches, and in 

 flight and habits and love of thistle-seed and in melody 

 and in their anxious piping notes they are like our 

 English bird. They are now fluttering about me, like 

 these of Ryme Intrinsica, displaying their golden feathers 

 in the brilliant sunshine, uttering their agitated cries, 

 while I climb tree after tree to find two or three or 

 four nests in each — dainty little mossy down-lined cups 

 placed between the slender branches and trunk, each with 



