220 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS 



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 

 knovv^n as goldfinches, and in flight and habits and love 

 of thistle-seed and in melodyand in their anxious piping 

 notes they are like our English bird. They are now 

 fluttering about me, like these of Ryme Tntrinsica, 

 displaying their golden feathers in the brilliant sun- 

 shine, 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 its complement 

 of shining pearly eggs — a beautiful sight to a boy ! 



Then another picture follows. We are now in the 

 burning days of November and December, the vast 

 open treeless plains as far as one can see parched to a 

 rust-brown, and cattle and horses and sheep in thou- 

 sands to be watered at the great well. I see the native 



