When the lazuli came back with food, it was only to see her little bird flying off to the other side of the tree after the wren-tit! I thought she seemed bewildered, but she followed in their wake—we all followed. Here came a closer test. Both lazuli and wren-tit stood before the small bird. Which would it go to? The lazuli kept silent, but the wren-tit called softly and the little one raised its wings and flew toward her, leaving its mother behind.
I watched and waited, but the wren-tit did not give over her kind offices, and the last I saw of the birds, on riding away, the three were flying in procession across the brush, the lazuli following its mother and the wren-tit bringing up the rear.
I went home very much puzzled. Was the wren-tit a lonely mother bird who had lost her own little ones, or was she merely an old maid with a warm spot in her heart for other peoples' little folks?
XVIII.
A RARE BIRD.
We may say that we care naught for the world and its ways, but most of us are more or less tricked by the high-sounding titles of the mighty. Even plain-thinking observers come under the same curse of Adam, and, like the snobs who turn scornfully from Mr. Jones to hang upon the words of Lord Higginbottom, will pass by a plain brown chippie to study with enthusiasm the ways of a phainopepla! Sometimes, however, in ornithology as in the world, a name does cover more than its letters, and we are duped into making some interesting discoveries as well as learning some of the important lessons in life. In the case of the phainopepla, no hopes that could be raised by his cognomen would equal the rare pleasure afforded by a study of his unusual ways.
THE PHAINOPEPLAS ON THE PEPPER-TREE