Gray Lady and the Birds: Stories of the Bird Year for Home and School

by Mabel Osgood Wright

Don’t spill it!

Steady, be ready,

Love your luck!

—Henry van Dyke, in Bird-Lore.

“I do declare!” exclaimed Tommy Todd’s grandfather, speaking out loud, much to the boy’s embarrassment. “I reckon I’ll get out a pole and go a-trout-fishing to-morrow dawn. I haven’t thought of a yallerthroat, not since I used to go casting in the brook that ran through Ogden’s meadows among the bush willows, and them birds kept hollerin’ on ahead.”

This is what the Wise Man told the children, standing in front of Miss Wilde’s desk and speaking as if he knew them all by name.

THE BIRDS AND I

The springtime belongs to the birds and me. We own it. We know when the May-flowers and the buttercups bloom. We know when the first frogs peep. We watch the awakening of the woods. We are wet by the warm April showers. We go where we will, and we are companions. Every tree and brook and blade of grass is ours; and our hearts are full of song.

There are boys who kill the birds, and girls who want to catch them and put them in cages; and there are others who steal their eggs. The birds are not partners with them; they are only servants. Birds, like people, sing for their friends, not for their masters. I am sure that one cannot think much of the springtime and the flowers if his heart is always set upon killing or catching something. We are happy when we are free; and so are the birds.

The birds and I get acquainted all over again every spring. They have seen strange lands in the winter, and all the brooks and woods have been covered with snow. So we run and romp together, and find all the nooks and crannies which we had half forgotten since October. The birds remember the old places. The Wrens pull the sticks from the old hollow rail and seem to be wild with joy to see the place again. They must be the same Wrens that were here last year and the year before, for strangers could not make so much fuss over an old rail. The Bluebirds and Wrens look into every crack and corner for a place in which to build, and the Robins and Chipping-sparrows explore every tree in the old orchard.