“Oh! but,” said Mrs Tit, “only to think of it; such a tiny body as I am to have twelve children, and all the while that great gawky, Mrs Stockdove, only to have one, for the other she had rolled out of the nest and was killed.”
“Nest,” said Tom, “I never saw such a nest; nothing but a few sticks laid across one another. No wonder the poor little thing rolled out; there was nothing to save it. But it is not every one who has so tidy and neat a little body for a wife as I have. So come, wifey, bustle about, for the children are all crying as though they had not eaten for a week; and I declare that I’m as hungry as any of them.”
And away flew the little tits, ridding the garden of thousands of insect plagues, and clearing off nuisances that would have destroyed half the fruit and vegetables in the garden. As for the little crawling flies and other insects, it was wonderful how fast they were snapped up; and though people would say that Tom-tit and his wife did a great deal of mischief by pecking the buds, it was quite a mistake; for though they pecked the buds, it was almost always when some sly little insect had made itself a hole in the bud, where it would have laid eggs, and its young would have totally destroyed the tree. Todkins, the old gardener, used to be in a fine way about it, and laid all sorts of charges against not only Tom-tit but all the rest of the birds, and used to want to set traps, and spread poisoned wheat, and get guns to shoot them with; but the master of Greenlawn would not let him; so the old man used to grumble and say there would be no fruit and no vegetables, for the birds would eat everything up, seed, fruit, and all. But the master of Greenlawn knew best, for he thought that if the birds were killed or frightened away, the insects, and grubs, and caterpillars, and slugs, and snails, and all sorts of other uncomfortable things, would come and eat the fruit and vegetables, and eat them all up, while the birds would be sure to leave some. And, sure enough, he was quite right, for somebody else, who used to kill and frighten away all the birds, had all his crops destroyed; while at Greenlawn, where there were hundreds and hundreds of birds, there was always plenty of fruit and vegetables; for the birds very seldom touched the fruit if they could get plenty of other food. Certainly sometimes Mr Sparrow used to pick out the finest and ripest cherries, or have a good peck at a juicy pear. The starlings, too, would gobble down the elder-berries, and sometimes the greenfinches used to go to see how the radish seeds were getting on, and taking tight hold of the thread-like shoots, pull them out of the ground, and leave them upon the top of the bed, fast asleep, for they never grew any more. Still, take it altogether, there was always twice as much fruit where there were plenty of birds, as where they were all driven away.
Chapter Seven.
An Odd Stranger.
There was one bird used to run about Greenlawn on a fine morning, hunting for tiny spiders and flies; he was a little, slim, dapper fellow, with a long tail, and whenever he jumped about a little way, or settled upon the ground, he used to make his long tail go wipple-wapple, up and down, as if he had shaken it loose; but it was only a funny habit of his, like that of Mrs Hedgesparrow, who was always shaking and shuffling her wings about. A fast runner was Mr Wagtail, and fine fun it was to see him skimming along the top of the ground in chase of a fly to take home to his wife, who used to live in a nest in the bank close by the hole over the pond, where old Ogrebones—blue-backed Billy the kingfisher, had his house, and used to spread the bones of his fishy little victims about the grass.
One day Walter Wagtail was running along the ground after a fly, and was going to snap him up, when—“bob”—he was gone in an instant; and Wagtail found himself standing before—oh! such an ugly thing, with two bright, staring eyes; a bloated, rough, dirty-looking body; four crooked legs, no neck, no wings, no tail, and such a heavy stomach, that he was obliged to crawl about with it resting upon the ground.
“Heugh! you horrid, ugly-looking thing,” said Wagtail; “you swallowed my fly. Where do you come from? what’s your name? who’s your father and mother, and what made you so ugly?”