PHASES OF BIRD LIFE. i6l 



wooing in a somewhat rudely persistent and obtru- 

 sive fashion. Society would soon ostracize the 

 human suitor having such manners, and might even 

 consider him amenable to the civil courts, and put 

 him in jail as a character unfit to be abroad. How- 

 ever, if hot pursuit, brazen manners, and half-coer- 

 cive measures are considered " good form " in 

 bird land, we of the human genus are the last who 

 have a right to find fault, for are we not the most 

 conventional beings on the face of the earth? You 

 might almost as well be in limbo or inferno as out 

 of style. Was there not a time when even the 

 flaming sunflower was regarded as the highest 

 emblem of the beautiful, merely because it was the 

 " fad," and not because anybody really felt that it 

 possessed special aesthetic qualities ? " People who 

 live in glass houses ought not to throw stones," is 

 the saucy challenge of the merry chickadee to his 

 human critic, as he dashes, like an animated " nigger- 

 chaser," after the little Dulcinea whom he has 

 marked for his bride. Then he stops, and, balancing 

 on a spray, whistles his sweetest minor tune, Pe-e- 

 w-e-e, pe-e-e-w-e-e ; which, being interpreted, prob- 

 ably means, — 



" Does not all the blood within me 

 Leap to meet thee, leap to meet thee, 

 As the spring to meet the sunshine ? " 



No doubt many a feathered swain is smitten, and 

 smitten very deeply too, with Cupid's arrow, flung 

 by some charming capturer of hearts. A little boy's 

 love-letter to a lassie who had taken his throb- 



