"Well, you hadn't much log to lie on," Tom said, relenting as he looked at the tiny limb where the small boy had been perched. "Can't be helped, at all events."
"You had jolly good luck to see 'em at all," 'Possum said. "I been about the Bush all me life, an' I haven't seen 'em half a dozen times. But that gully's always a haunt for birds—nobody hardly ever goes there. Look—there's a blue wren."
"Oh!—the lovely thing!" Aileen breathed.
He was certainly a lovely thing—a proud little person of black and enamel-blue, with a blue cap and a deep-blue tail nearly as long as his whole body. He was very busy, strutting happily about the ground or fluttering from twig to twig with a rapid flight that made him look like a glancing jewel. Finally he perched on a bough and broke into a little song as exquisite as himself: and then dashed off in a great hurry to find his mate.
"What a jolly little chap!" Garth uttered.
"He's a dear, ain't he?" 'Possum said. "An' his little mate's as plain as he's pretty, but she's a dear, too. Look—there's a couple of honey-eaters!" She pointed out a pair of dainty black and yellow birds, hanging head downwards under a patch of eucalyptus blossom. They had long, curved, slender beaks, in and out of which darted busy tongues ending in little brushes that swept the honey from the flowers.
"But they're exquisite!" Aileen uttered. "I didn't know we had anything so lovely."
"There's dozens of different sorts of honey-eaters, an' they're all lovely," 'Possum said. "Some day we'll go out, will we, Missus, an' spend a whole day watchin' birds?"
"I would love to," Aileen said.
"Bert came home from school once, an' said they'd been reading a bit o' poitry by some bloke that said Australian birds hadn't any songs," 'Possum said, with disgust. "Well, I s'pose a bloke has to be clever to write poitry, but I don't reckon he knew much about Australia. I wouldn't ask anything better than our own of magpie singin' in the early morning, or the thrush, or that little blue wren, or any of the warblers—an' there's dozens an' dozens of others.. Even the ol' butcher-bird can sing a fair treat. I reckon he was a silly bloke, don't you?"