The goldfinches came also, beginning in early spring when the males and females wear the same clothes of dull olive-brown and black, and making daily visits all through the season until the males after wearing a mottled costume put on their yellow wedding coats and black caps, and put them off again.
Black and white nuthatches took their dog food differently, picking up the larger bits and carrying them into the apple tree, where they hammered them to pieces exactly as they would crack beechnuts or corn kernels.
Anne was not surprised that birds like these should feed on dog biscuit, but when catbirds, robins, and phœbes—the air-living flycatchers—began to be the regular table boarders of the Waddles family, she began to wonder. These last birds were of course first attracted by the kettle of cooked meat scraps that was often hung in the tree to cool; but lacking meat, they were satisfied with the crumbs.
One morning a lame-winged crow appeared from the wood edge and walked solemnly up to the dish where Jack and Jill were eating, giving a squawk that sent them in haste to the nursery, though Jill soon came back and attempted to flirt with his crowship, which so surprised him that he nearly choked to death by swallowing too quickly. This ended in Baldy’s catching the crow, who was not a welcome garden guest, as was proved by the chorus of alarm notes that arose at his appearance, and he actually had the destruction of many orchard homes written against him in the Birdland records.
One morning Bobwhite, who had been whistling and telling his name proudly from the protected meadows all the spring, appeared on the fence. Anne held her breath and Tommy watched, round eyed with eagerness. Bob threw back his head and proclaimed his name proudly; then no one disputing him he called more plaintively, poor-bobwhite! dropped from the wall to the grass, and then walked along the gravel path as unconcernedly as any barnyard fowl. Coming to where the pups had upset their dish, he gave a few scratches and began to pick up the smallest bits as if he was gleaning grain in the stubble.
At this moment Mrs. Waddles coming round the house corner flushed Bob, and he rose with the whirring of wings that is one of the eery sounds of the autumn lanes every year before grouse, quail, and woodcock have grown too gun shy, and, going over the garden house, disappeared in the long grass. But he came again and took home a report of the good eating, for one summer morning a little after dawn, when Anne was sitting on the foot of her bed and looking out of her window, she saw what she at first took to be Tommy’s banty hen leading a large brood of chicks down the garden path. Rubbing her sleepy eyes, she leaned out of the window and saw that they were not the bantams, but Mamma Quail and the children out for a breakfast walk.
Anne hurried down as quickly as she could, but Waddles cheered so loudly, thinking that she was also going for a walk, that the party disappeared in the quince bushes before she could steal up to them. It had rained in the night, and their chicken-like footprints in the fine moist gravel by the empty dog dishes told her that they had breakfasted there.
In autumn the jays always came slyly to the oaks and beeches at Happy Hall and carried away nuts and acorns for winter use, storing some in a hollow chestnut in the pasture, and others under the shingles of the old cow barn.
When the resting season came, however, they usually stole away to the pine woods across the river, as Anne’s father did not encourage them about the garden; for whether or not they are always unneighbourly egg thieves, it is certain they carry terror to the gentler hearts of Birdland, and at Happy Hall nothing might stay that could annoy the wood thrushes and brown thrashers that returned season after season.
