April 3.
Signs of the Seasons.
It is noticed on this day in the “Perennial Calendar,” that the birds are now arriving daily, and forming arrangements for the hatching and nurture of their future young. The different sorts of nests of each species, adapted to the wants of each, and springing out of their respective instincts, combined with the propensity to construct, would form a curious subject of research for the natural historian. Every part of the world furnishes materials for the aërial architects: leaves and small twigs, roots and dried grass, mixed with clay, serve for the external; whilst moss, wool, fine hair, and the softest animal and vegetable downs, form the warm internal part of these commodious dwellings:—
Of vernal songsters—some to the holly hedge,
Nestling, repair, and to the thicket some;
Some to the rude protection of the thorn
Commit their feeble offspring: the cleft tree
Offers its kind concealment to a few,
Their food its insects, and its moss their nests:
Others apart, far in the grassy dale
Or roughening waste, their humble texture weave:
But most in woodland solitudes delight,
In unfrequented glooms or shaggy banks,
Steep, and divided by a babbling brook,
Whose murmurs soothe them all the livelong day,
When by kind duty fixed. Among the roots
Of hazel, pendent o’er the plaintive stream,
They frame the first foundation of their domes,
Dry sprigs of trees, in artful fabric laid,
And bound with clay together. Now ’tis naught
But restless hurry through the busy air,
Beat by unnumbered wings. The swallow sweeps
The slimy pool, to build the hanging house
Intent: and often from the careless back
Of herds and flocks a thousand tugging bills
Pluck hair and wool; and oft, when unobserved,
Steal from the barn a straw; till soft and warm,
Clean and complete, their habitation grows.
Thomson.
The cavern-loving wren sequestered seeks
The verdant shelter of the hollow stump,
And with congenial moss, harmless deceit,
Constructs a safe abode. On topmost boughs
The glossy raven, and the hoarsevoiced crow,
Rocked by the storm, erect their airy nests.
The ousel, lone frequenter of the grove
Of fragrant pines, in solemn depth of shade
Finds rest; or ’mid the holly’s shining leaves,
A simple bush the piping thrush contents,
Though in the woodland concert he aloft
Trills from his spotted throat a powerful strain,
And scorns the humbler quire. The lark too asks
A lowly dwelling, hid beneath a turf,
Or hollow, trodden by the sinking hoof;
Songster of heaven! who to the sun such lays
Pours forth, as earth ne’er owns. Within the hedge
The sparrow lays her skystained eggs. The barn,
With eaves o’erpendant, holds the chattering tribe:
Secret the linnet seeks the tangled copse:
The white owl seeks some antique ruined wall,
Fearless of rapine; or in hollow trees,
Which age has caverned, safely courts repose:
The thievish pie, in twofold colours clad,
Roofs o’er her curious nest with firmwreathed twigs,
And sidelong forms her cautious door; she dreads
The taloned kite, or pouncing hawk; savage
Herself, with craft suspicion ever dwells.
Bidlake.