The Chorus of the Forest 



among the treetops he is provided with wisdom and 

 preculiarly protected by nature. His coat is the 

 color of bark, his location is a lichen-covered limb, 

 his nest a small flat bowl of finest twigs, grass- 

 lined, and shaped to reproduce exactly the knots 

 on the trees around it, and then covered with 

 lichens to match those closest. This covering is 

 deftly bound with spider webs passing under the 

 limb and around the nest securely. When the 

 young emerge and feather, like separate seeds of 

 the globe of a dandelion is the down that covers 

 them, and in their nest or on the limb beside it, 

 behold! they appear as lichens too. We noticed 

 how inconsijicuously colored the elders were, how 

 they matched the treetops and the nest some time 

 deserted, and how deft they were at twisting and 

 turning on wing — real acrobats, — so that no other 

 birds of field or forest are better protected or so 

 sure to bring off a brood in safety. 



Then why this very mournful music recorded by 

 every ornithologist who ever wrote of them? The 

 answer is, there is no sadness in their song. In 

 all of a long and varied acquaintance with them I 

 have found them particularly jolly small birds, 

 safe above the average, much closer heaven than 

 any other of their size. They are not of doleful 

 disposition, and no inconsolable grief is theirs. 

 They are true children of the forest, and in its 

 solemn silences, in the slow wail of its winds, in 



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