Bird Stories

e, that might be meant for you if you were quiet and waited for it to come. Perhaps you have felt like that when you walked down the aisle of a church, with the sun shining through the lovely glass

and helping the world and being happy-all very proper things to hear about while the bel

smile. Not that you would have laughed at him, you know. You would have smile

with a dear nod of his little head, which would have mad

pointed

nd buff-colored feathers, and he

think that he is trying to live so wisely that he can teach us how to be happier, too. Of course Minister Chick had not earned th

did and the life he lived. So, while we listen to his happy song, we can watch his busy hours

een very soft and lovely that way-a world all white and green below, with a sky of wonderful blue that the firs pointed to like steeples. Then, as if that were not decoration enough, another storm had come, and had put on the glitter that was brightest at the edge of the forest where the sun shone on it. The second storm had covered the soft white with dazzling

sic after an

singing, "Chick, D.D.," as he came. The clear cold air and the exercise of flying after his

y a time he had breakfasted there. Eggs with shiny black shells, not so big as the head of a pi

them, and they were never too cold for him to relish; so out he came to the birch trees, with a cheery

r as he moved among them and the icicles that dangled down rang and clicked as they struck one another. The ice-storm

t foolish enough to spend his morning searching through the icy birch trees, for he had a wise little brain in his head and soon found out that it was no

partly melted, and the soaked berries had stained it so that it looked like delicious pink ice-cream. Some of the stain had dripped to the snow below, so there were places that lo

s; but sometimes there were plump little morsels hidden among them, that he liked to pull out and eat. If there was anything ther

od tasty bit to start with, and then he would feel about in other parts of the cone for small insects, which often creep into suc

ws that it had bent them down till th

the Farm-House had dropped way down below the zero mark, and the wind was in the north. But the cold did not matter if Chick could find food. His feet were bare; but that did not matter, either, if he could

pped their chimes, and the world was still. Still, except for the

A roaring Booooooom, which was something like the waves rushing against a rocky shore, and something like distant thunder, and something

ever hears anything just like it, unless he is out where th

the top of a puffed-up pie that is pricked; and the air that has been

hich, a moment before, had lain over the soft snow, all whole, for a

d the silence of the field when he stopped to listen now and then. For the winter sounds were so dear to the Farmer Boy who lived at the edge of Christmas-tree Land, that he would never forget them even when he should become a man. He would always remember the snowshoe tramps across the mead

ts he spilled in a heap near the foot of a tree, and the rest he tied here and there to th

" in a minute, although it was not nearly so loud. For those were words he often used himself. They meant, perhaps, many things;

t with his head up, and sang "Chick, D.D." He picked at it with his head down and called, "Chick, D.D.D.D.D.D.D., Chick, D.D." He flew here and there, too gay with happiness to stay long anywhere,

others just like them came, and then eight more, and by that time there was such a "Chick"-ing and "D.D."-ing and such a whisking to and fro of black caps and black bibs, that no one paid much attention when Minister Chick, D.D., himself,

ut the good whiff he had smelled when he went through the kitchen with the snowsho

rty-twit"? They flew like goldfinches, and they sounded like goldfinches, both in the twitterty song of their flight and their "Tweeet" as they called one another. But they were not goldfinches. Oh, my, no! For they were dressed in

and some cracked corn and crumbs. And there were squash-seeds, and sunflower-seeds, and seedy apple-cores that had been br

and seeds seemed a signal through the cou

who called, "Ping," as if he were speaking through his nose. There was one with slender bil

ayly. After that good Christmas feast he and his flock returned each day; and when, in due ti

r he should put on a nicotine spray for the aphids and an arsenical spray for the tent caterpillars, he couldn

he rest of the hungry crew, to strip the leaves from the orchard, the Farmer Boy walked among the rows, to see how much poison he would ne

d leaves for the trees, he saved rosy apples for city girls and boys to

him over the icy spells, and free house-rent in the old hollow pos

en he had eaten until dusk overtook him before he had time to fly back to the shelter of the fir forest. He found t

. "Fee-bee?" he had asked her as he called her attention to it; and "Fee-bee," she had replied on looking it over. So

old, they were also thick enough to keep out the hottest of the summer heat. If they kept out the wet of the driving storm, they held enough of the old-wood moisture within so that the roo

the ground before their doorway, either. They took them off to some distance, and had no heap near by, as a sign to say, "A

lane. Then Chick had picked up a gay feather that had floated down from a scarlet bird that sang in the tree-tops, and tore off silk from a cocoon. So, bit by bit, they gathered their treasures, until many a woodland and meadow creature and plant had had a share in th

to seem as if Chick had eaten too many insect eggs in the spring, there were so few caterpillars hatching out. But the fewer there were, the harder they hunted; and the harder they hunted, the scarcer became the caterpillars. So when Dee, Chee, Fee, Wee, Lee, Bee, Mee, and Zee were two weeks old, and came out of the hollow post to se

wing pine trees, serving the beech trees such a good turn that the beechnut crop was the he

finding the best feeding-places. "Chick, D.D.D.D.D.," they called in thanksgiving, as they found great plenty; and warblers and kingle

the prairies of Brazil and Paraguay, by way of Florida and Jamaica. The strange honk of geese floated down from V-shaped flocks, as if they were

H

nough for him. Warblers may go and nuthatches may come. 'Tis a

that he renders service. The trees of the north are the healthier for his presence. Because of him, the purse of man is fatter, and his larder better stocked. He has done no harm as h

watch the black-capped sprite without catching, for a moment at least, a messa

rt of Christmas-tree Land has a right to his "D.D.,"