BIRD INTIMACIES 



the goldfinches — one of the prettiest episodes in 

 the Hves of any of our birds, a real musical reunion 

 of the goldfinch tribe, apparently a whole township, 

 many hundreds of them, filling scores of the tree- 

 tops along the road and in the groves with a fine, 

 sibilant chorus which the ear refers vaguely to the 

 surrounding tree-tops, but which the eye fails 

 adequately to account for. It comes from every- 

 where, but from nowhere in particular. The birds 

 sit singly here and there amid the branches, and it 

 is difficult to identify the singers. It is a minor 

 strain, but multitudinous, and fills all the air. The 

 males are just donning their golden uniforms, as if 

 to celebrate the blooming of the dandelions, which, 

 with the elm-trees, afford them their earliest food- 

 supply. While they are singing they are busy cut- 

 ting out the green germs of the elm flakes, and going 

 down to the ground and tearing open the closed 

 dandelion-heads that have shut up to ripen their 

 seeds, preparatory to their second and ethereal 

 flowering when they become spheres of fragile sil- 

 ver down. 



Whether this annual reunion of the goldfinches 

 should be called a dandelion festival, or a new-coat 

 festival, or whether it is to bring the sexes together 

 preliminary to the mating-season, I am at a loss 

 to decide. It usually lasts a week or more, and 

 continues on wet days as well as on fair. It all 

 has a decidedly festive air, like the fete-days of 



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