MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE. 13 



stripping the fibrous bark from a honeysuckle growing over 

 the Very door. But, indeed, all my birds look upon me as if 

 I were a mere tenant at will, and they were landlords. With 

 shame I confess it, I have been bullied even by a humming 

 bird. This spring, as I was cleansing a pear-tree of its 

 lichens, one of these little zigzagging blurs came purring 

 toward me, couching his long bill like a lance, his throat 

 sparkling with angry fire, to warn me off from a Missouri- 

 currant whose honey he was sipping. And many a time he 

 has driven me out of a flower-bed. This summer, by the 

 way, a pair of these winged emeralds fastened their mossy 

 acorn-cup upon a bough of the same elm which the orioles 

 had enlivened the year before. We watched all their pro 

 ceedings from the window through an opera-glass, and saw 

 their two nestlings grow from black needles with a tuft of 

 down at the lower end, till they whirled away on their first 

 short experimental flights. They became strong of wing in a 

 surprisingly short time, and I never saw them or the male 

 bird after, though the female was regular as usual in her visits 

 to our petunias and verbenas. I do not think it ground 

 enough for a generalization, but in the many times when I 

 watched the old birds feeding their young, the mother always 

 alighted, while the father as uniformly remained upon the 

 wing. 



The bobolinks are generally chance visitors, tinklingthrough 

 the garden in blossoming-time, but this year, owing to the 

 long rains early in the season, their favourite meadows were 

 flooded, and they were driven to the upland. So I had a 

 pair of them domiciled in my grass-field. The male used to 

 perch in an apple-tree, then in full bloom, and, while I stood 

 perfectly still close by, he would circle away, quivering round 

 the entire field of five acres, with no break in his song, and 

 settle down again among the blossoms, to be hurried away 

 almost immediately by a new rapture of music. He had the 

 volubility of an Italian charlatan at a fair, and, like him, 

 appeared to be proclaiming the merits of some quack re 

 medy. Opodeldoc-opodeldoc-try-Doctor-Lincoln s-opodeldoc / 

 he seemed to repeat over and over again, with a rapidity that 

 would have distanced the deftest-tongued Figaro that ever 

 rattled. I remember Count Gurowski saying once, with that 

 easy superiority of knowledge about this country which is the 

 monopoly of foreigners, that we had no singing-birds ! Well 



