"Between these bright-eyed little watchers, always on the alert, a dozen or more birds were tip-toeing in a square. Every motion was with all the grace and harmony which are nature's own. At some little bird-signal which I didn't see, two birds advanced from diagonal corners of the square, each bird tripping along with short, airy and graceful steps, something like what we imagine characterized the old-time 'minuet.' Each bird, as the partners came near each other, bobbed its head in a graceful little bow, and both tripped back as they came to their places in the square. Immediately the birds from the two other corners advanced with the same airy grace, the same short, quick, and tripping steps, saluting and retreating as the others had done.
"A wagon driven along the road disturbed the band of dancers, who scudded away under leaves, through the fence, into the deep grass of the field beyond. When the team had passed out of sight and the ball-room was again their own, back came the pretty revelers stealthily, their brown heads uplifted as their bright eyes scanned the landscape. Seeing no intruder, they again took their places the same as before and began again the same quadrille—advancing, meeting, bowing, and retreating.
"It was the prettiest and most graceful little 'society affair' you can imagine! There was no music—no song that I could hear—yet every little bird in every turn and step while the dance was on, moved as to a measured harmony.
"Did the birds keep 'time—time, in a sort of runic rhyme' to melody in their hearts, or to a symphony, I could not hear, but which goes up unceasingly like a hymn of praise from nature's great orchestra? I longed to know.
"In my delight and desire to learn more of the bewitching bird-play, I half forgot I was a clumsy woman, and an unconscious movement betrayed my presence. The little sentinel nearest me quickly lifted his brown head, and spying me gave his signal—how, I could not guess, for not a sound was uttered; but all the dancers stretched their little necks an instant and sped away. In a moment the ground was cleared and the dancers came not back."
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| PRESENTED BY LOUIS G. KUNZE. | . ⅔ Life-size. | COPYRIGHT 1899, NATURE STUDY PUB. CO., CHICAGO. |
