“Dearie, Dearie, hear me! Dearie, Dearie, hear me!”
A little bird was singing on a twig in the sunshine. He looked like a little bit of sunshine himself. He was bright yellow, except his wings and tail and his little cap. They were black as jet. The little cap was pulled down over
The little bird perked his head to one side, and swelled out his yellow throat. Over and over he sang: “Dearie, Dearie, hear me!”
But Dearie was not paying much attention to him. She was too busy. She was beginning to build her nest.
Dearie could not sing so well as Goldy, and she was not so prettily dressed. Her back was more greenish brown than yellow. Her breast was yellowish white. Her wings were dark gray, and she wore no pretty cap.
But there was one thing Dearie could do as well as any bird in the world. She could make a bed for her babies.
It was time for Dearie to go to work. She and Goldy had had a long, long playtime. It was now June, and they had been playing ever since early in the spring.
The thistle birds’ playtime began when the seeds came out on the elm tree. That was very, very early, long before the leaves had begun to come out on any of the trees.
One day in early spring Dearie had been down in the low grounds by the river. She had been hunting for seeds on the dead grass stems. All winter long she had eaten seeds of grass and weeds. She looked up at the big elm tree on the top of a high bank. The elm tree was all green. It looked as if it were full of leaves. But the green things on it were not leaves. They were seeds, fresh, green, young seeds.
Up flew Dearie. What a feast she was going to have! And what fun! Some other birds had seen the fresh green seeds, too. Five or six were already in the elm tree.
Next day there were more birds in the elm tree. Goldy was there, too, and at least twenty other birds like him, all bright yellow and black.
But there was plenty to eat for all that came. They hardly knew where to begin. They fluttered from one twig to another. They caught hold of the twigs with their strong, slender toes, and swung their bodies down. Then they put their heads to one side and pulled off mouthfuls of the fresh green seeds. All the time they kept up a happy, soft, little prattle of bird talk.
Sometimes the birds flew off to another tree or down to the river for a drink. Sometimes, I think, they flew just because the sun was shining and they were too happy to stay still.
The birds would spread their wings and spring up out of the tree. Then they would close their wings and coast down the air, just the way children coast down a snowy hill in wintertime.
When the birds were at the bottom of the air hill, they would spread their wings and glide up again. Their flying was like a wave moving up and down, up and down, up and down.
These birds had a little song that they saved just for flying. Just as they sailed down in the air, they sang: “Per-chick-or-ree! Per-chick-or-ree!”
Perhaps that is the way the birds have of shouting, “Whoo-ee! Here I go!” Or maybe they are calling, “O! look at me!” just as children do when they coast down a hill and out onto the flat land below.
The elm seeds lasted a long time. By the time they were gone there were young and tender seeds on the fresh green grass. So all the goldfinches—they were goldfinches, you know—now got their food from the grass of the meadows and parks.
Sometimes there were so many goldfinches in the grass that one might think he saw a field of buttercups. They talked their sweet, soft, bird talk, and flew from place to place, singing their gay little flying song. They were as happy as the day is long.
All the birds but the goldfinches had gone to work long ago. The bluebirds had found a hole in a fence post or in a dead tree. They had made their nests and laid their eggs and hatched their babies. By this time their babies were flying.
The robins had built a little mud bowl on an oak, a maple, or an apple limb and lined it with soft grass and hair. Their babies would soon be out of the nest.
Sparrows, humming birds, thrushes, all the other birds you know, had stopped playing and singing in the sunshine and were making homes and bringing up their families.
And now the goldfinches were just ready to go to work. Each of them had found a mate for himself. Goldy had chosen Dearie, and they had found a lovely little tree in which to put their nest.
Dearie might have been slow getting to housekeeping, but she was a fine housekeeper now that she had started. There was not a better made nest in all the woods and fields than the one she made for her babies.
The nest was a beautiful little cup. Outside, it was made of fine strips of bark and grass. It was trimmed with green and gray moss. Dearie fastened the moss on with spider silk.
Inside the nest there was the softest feather bed. It was softer than a real feather bed, for it was made of thistle silk. The nest was more than an inch thick. Even Dearie’s wee babies would be quite safe in a bed like that.
While Dearie was making the bed, Goldy sang to her: “Dearie, Dearie! hear me!” Perhaps he wanted her to come and play again. Perhaps he was trying to tell her what a good housekeeper she was.
But Dearie kept on working. After she finished the nest, she laid five pretty, pale blue eggs in it. Then she settled down to the job of keeping them warm.
Now Goldy went to work too. Dearie was too busy keeping the eggs warm to get food for herself. So Goldy fed her. Away he went, and back he flew with his mouth full of seeds. You would not think that he could sing now. But he did. Every time he flew away he sang her a sweet little song. And Dearie sang a little song back to him. Perhaps she was thanking him for the seeds he brought her.
By and by there were five baby goldfinches. Then both Goldy and Dearie were busy all day long. Five babies to feed left them no time to play. If one hungry mouth was not open, another one was begging for food.
But there was plenty of food about the goldfinches’ nest. The thistles in the pasture were going to seed. So were the grasses and flowers and all kinds of weeds.
It was a happy day when the baby goldfinches were old enough to fly out of the nest. Soon after that they learned to find their own food. Goldy and Dearie showed them how.
The first place Goldy and Dearie took their babies was to the big thistles in the pasture. Cows and children may be afraid of thistles, but goldfinches are not. They perched on the prickly thistle heads and put their bills down into the purple and white puffs. They found the thistle seeds and cracked them in their strong bills.
swallow seeds whole, but they do not. They crack seeds in their bills, just as our tame canaries do. In fact, goldfinches are cousins of the canaries, and they eat seeds in the same way, since they have very strong bills.
Watch a canary when he is eating seeds. He gets the seed well back in his bill, then tries to shut his mouth. The seed shell or husk cracks and falls away, and the meat of the seed slips down his throat.
The goldfinches crack big, hard seeds in the same way. And the baby goldfinches seem to know just what to do with hard seeds.
Many persons call the goldfinches thistle birds. Can you guess why? It is because they are so often seen sitting on the big thistle heads and picking out the seeds.
But Goldy and his family ate other seeds too. One day Goldy and Dearie and the babies found a long row of flowers in a garden near by. They perched on the sunflower heads, dug out the big seeds, and cracked them open! How good the meats were! The baby goldfinches had a real party that day. You should have seen them. They looked like little sunflowers themselves, pretty yellow things.
Winter was coming now. Many of the birds were going south. But Goldy and Dearie and their family did not go. They did not have to go. There were grass and weed seeds enough in the river bottom to last all winter.
In October the whole family put on winter clothes. You would not have known them. Dull gray feathers grew out in place of the pretty yellow coats. Goldy lost his little black cap. The babies had not got their caps yet.
Of course it would be hard enough work finding food and keeping warm all winter. If the snow was very deep, many of the grasses and weeds would be covered up. But the life of birds in winter is hardly ever easy. Many birds work all day long to get enough to eat. A great many die from cold or hunger.
At one farm home the birds found they had friends. When there was much snow the children of this home scattered bird food under trees and shrubs every day. Sometimes it was seeds, sometimes crumbs of bread or johnny-cake; and sometimes they tied bits of fat meat to the limbs of a tree. But spring would come by and by. The goldfinches would shed their gray winter feathers. Their new spring suits would be just like the ones Goldy and Dearie wore last summer. The elm seeds would come out, and playtime and mating time would begin again.
Nguồn: Wikisource English — By the Roadside (Dunn and Troxell)/Thistle Birds. Văn bản được nhập và định dạng lại; CC BY-SA 4.0, có thể áp dụng điều khoản bổ sung của tác phẩm.