Songs of the Fields 



work for a week, and sometimes longer. They use 

 quantities of plant fiber stripped from last year's 

 dead, dry weeds, and line copiously with thistle 

 and milkweed down. Why such deliberate and 

 dainty architecture is not conducive to neater home- 

 life is difficult to say; for these exquisite little birds 

 are the filthiest housekeepers I know intimately. 



Nearly all songsters almost every bird, in 

 fact with its bill removes from the young the 

 excrement, carrying and dropping it far from the 

 nest. The goldfinches have cradles filled to over- 

 flowing, five and six young to the brood, and the 

 elders pay no attention to this feature of parent- 

 hood, so that in a short time their nests are as white 

 outside with a rain of droppings as they are inside 

 with milkweed down. 



The females are olive-green and yellow birds, 

 and the males are similar in winter. In summer 

 they don a nuptial dress, that with the pure, bub- 

 bling melody of their song must make them irre- 

 sistible. They wear a black cap and sleeves, have 

 a tail touched with black and white, and a pure 

 lemon-yellow waistcoat. They frequent gardens, 

 deserted orchards, and roadsides. Their song is of 

 such bubbling spontaneity that they can not re- 

 main on a perch to sing it, but go darting in waves 

 of flight over fields and across the road before you, 

 sowing notes broadcast as the wind scatters the 

 seed they love. They have a tribal call that can 

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