AN ARCADIAN CALENDAR 



their good work in eating weed seeds, and they seem to 

 fall an easy prey to their foes, to garden cats, and to 

 sparrow-hawks. It is another misfortune of the gold- 

 finch that he is a favourite cage-bird, because of his 

 silvery voice and golden wings. A cock goldfinch seems 

 to be well aware of the glory of his wings, when in 

 courting days he stretches them out, fanwise, just far 

 enough to show off the golden bars, like a tailor dis- 

 playing the gorgeous pattern of a cloth whence, 

 perhaps, his old name, Proud Tailor. 



BEECHES with ripe beechmast now become scenes of 

 high revels. The brown and orange canopy 

 Beech- of the leaves may hide from view every one 

 Tree of a great flock of feasting wood-pigeons. 



Revellers On a dry twig snapping, it is then startling 

 to hear a hundred pigeons crashing forth on 

 loud-clapping wings. The babel is too much for the 

 nerves of the timorous squirrels who have been feeding 

 respectfully on the ground, and all make helter-skelter 

 for the tree-trunks. Their one idea is to cheat intruders' 

 eyes by keeping still. After one spring from the ground, 

 as the sharp claws of the outspread feet take hold of 

 the trunk, the squirrel stays fast, spread-eaglewise, 

 anxiously peering over his shoulder, and as motionless 

 as any lamented ancestor, stuffed and mounted in a 

 glass case. With the next spring made perhaps ten 

 minutes later he puts the tree-trunk between the 

 enemy and his nobility. 



THIS merry forester, the squirrel, seems to feast all day 

 now, as if intent on fattening himself against winter 



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