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Bird - Lore 



mouthful of feathers. I, too, came looking for a feast (to the eye), but the 

 platter is licked clean; my feast has literally taken wings, and there is left 

 me not even an eyeful of feathers. 



Then there are the tracks of Horned Larks and Snow Buntings among 

 the stubble. What bird-student has not pored over these little trails, no- 

 ting how they twisted and wound and ramified and criss-crossed! Here 

 they gather interestingly about a particular weed-stalk, then spread out 

 aimlessly, or hurry along more or less parallel across a little barren reach 

 •of snow; again, they will focus on a sheltered corner of an old rail-fence, 

 about which the flock has spent the past night. 



TRACKS OF HORNED LARKS 



What meaning you read into those tracks — what freedom, good-fellow- 

 ship, intelligence! You congratulate yourself; what good fortune! How 

 near you are to nature! Yes, you are even in one of nature's very banquet 

 halls and ball-rooms. But what is a banquet-hall and a ball-room when 

 the revelry is over, the guests gone, and the music hushed? 



What misconceptions our feeble human vision gives rise to! Unless 

 we read these signs, nature's eternal wakefulness, we are apt to forget 

 that the real day is twenty-four hours long, begins at moonrise with the 

 matins of Owls, and the unfolding of the primrose, in its season. While 

 the sun shines, nature is really taking a cat-nap, though with one eye open 

 Why is the Owl so solemn and sage, staring us out of countenance with 

 those great, unfathomable, wise eyes of his? What a world of knowledge, 

 indeed, he must have — ^knowledge which we little suspect! What if nature- 

 lovers and nature-writers are all this while spending their enthusiasm 

 find suDcrlatives on the least interesting portion of the day! 



