durable as gray and black and brown. 
Though not a slave to fashion, he does 
freshen up a bit in the spring and puts 
on a new cap of chestnut, not to be 
too old fogyish. But he believes in 
wearing courting clothes all the year 
round. Young chippies put on striped 
bibs until they are out of the nursery, 
but the old folks like a plain shirt front. 
No such notion has the bam swal- 
low. He believes in family equality, 
even in the matter of clothes; and hav- 
ing been born in a pretty and becoming 
suit, wears it all the time. When the 
cinquefoil fingers the grass, you may 
look for his swallow-tailed coat in the 
air; and if the April sun strikes its 
steel-blue broadcloth, and discloses 
the bright chestnut muffler and the 
pale-tinted vest, you will rejoice that 
old fashions prevail in swallow-land. 
These swift-flying birds have some- 
thing higher to think about than chang- 
ing their clothes. 
It seems otherwise with some birds 
of the meadow. That gay dandy, the 
bobolink, for instance, lays himself out 
to make a sensation in the breast of his 
fair one. When he started on his 
southern trip last autumn, he wore a 
traveling-suit of buff and brown, not 
unlike Mistress Bobolink's and the lit- 
tle Links'. No doubt he knew the dan- 
ger lurking in the reeds of Pennsylva- 
nia and the rice-fields of Carolina, and 
hoped to escape observation while fat- 
tening there. In the spring, if fortu- 
nate enough to have escaped the gun- 
ner, he flies back to his northern home, 
"dressed to kill," in human phrase, hap- 
pily not, in bird language. Robert 
o'Lincoln is a funny fellow disguised 
as a bishop. Richard Steele, the rol- 
licking horse-guardsman, posing as a 
Christian hero, is a human parallel. 
With a black vest buttoned to the 
throat, a black cap and choker, bobo- 
link's front is as solemn as the end- 
man's at a minstrel show. But what a 
coat! Buff, white and black in eccentric 
combination; and at the nape of the 
neck, a yellow posy, that deepens with 
the buttercups and fades almost as 
soon. Bobby is original, but he con- 
forms to taste, and introduces no dis- 
cordant color-tone into his field of but- 
tercups and clover. In his ecstatic 
flight he seems to have caught a field 
flower on his back; and if a golden- 
hearted daisy were to speak, surely it 
would be in such a joyous tongue. 
A red, red rose never blooms in a 
clover meadow, and the grosbeak does 
not go there for his chief spring adorn- 
ment. Red roses do bloom all the 
year, though none so lovely as the rose 
of June; and so the grosbeak wears his 
distinctive flower at his throat the 
round year, but it is loveliest in early 
summer. I do not know a prettier 
fashion — do you? — for human kind or 
bird, than a flower over the heart. I 
fancy that a voice is sweeter when a 
breast is thus adorned. If ever the 
rich passion of a red, red rose finds ex- 
pression, it is in the caressing, exultant 
love-song of the rose-breasted gros- 
beak. The one who inspires it looks 
like an overgrown sparrow; but gros- 
beak knows the difference, if you do 
not. If that wise parent should ever 
be in doubt as to his own son, who 
always favors the mother at the start, 
he has but to lift up the youngster's 
wings, and the rose- red lining will show 
at once that he is no common sparrow. 
That pretty fashion of a contrast in 
linings is not confined to the grosbeak. 
The flicker, too, has his wings deli- 
cately lined with — a scrap of sunset 
sky. I do not know whetherhe found his 
material there or lower down in a 
marsh of marigolds; but when he flies 
over your head into the elm tree and 
plies his trade, you will see that he is 
fitly named, golden-winged wood- 
pecker. He makes no fuss over his 
spring clothes. A fresh red tie, which, 
oddly enough, he wears on the back of 
his neck, a retinting of his bright lin- 
ing, a new gloss on his spotted vest 
and striped coat, and his toilet is made. 
Madame Flicker is so like her spouse 
that you would be puzzled to tell them 
apart, but for his black mustache. 
The flicker fashion of dressing alike 
may come from advanced notions of 
equality; whatever its source, the pur- 
ple finch is of another mind. He sac- 
rifices much, almost his own identity, 
to love of variety; and yet he is never 
purple. His name simply perpetuates 
a blunder for which no excuse can be 
offered. Pokeberry is his prevailing 
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