Birds and All Nature: Spring Fashions

Birds and All Nature: April 1899
SPRING FASHIONS.
ELLA GILBERT IVES
Page 3 of 3

When dame nature in the spring
   For her annual opening
Has her doors and windows washed by April showers;
   When the sun has turned the key,
And the loosened buds are free
   To come out and pile the shelving rocks with flowers;

When the maple wreathes her head
   With a posy-garland red,
And the grass-blade sticks a feather in his cap;
   When the tassels trim the birch,
And the oak-tree in the lurch
   Hurries up to get some fringes for his wrap;

When the willow's yellow sheen
   And the meadow's emerald green
Are the fashionable colors of the day;
   When the bank its pledges old
Pays in dandelion gold,
   And horse-chestnut folds its baby hands to pray —

Then from Cuba and the isles
   Where a tropic sun beguiles,
And from lands beyond the Caribbean sea,
   Every dainty warbler flocks
With a tiny music-box
   And a trunk of pretty feathers duty-free.

And in colors manifold,
   Orange, scarlet, blue, and gold,
Green and yellow, black, and brown and grays galore,
   They will thread the forest aisles
With the very latest styles,
   And a tune apiece to open up the score.

But they do not care to part
   With their decorative art,
Which must always have the background of a tree;
   And will surely bring a curse
To a grasping mind or purse,
   Since God loves the birds as well as you and me.

BIRDS THAT DO NOT SING.

SINGING is applied to birds in the same sense that it is to human beings — the utterance of musical notes. Every person makes vocal sounds of some kind, but many persons never attempt to sing. So it is with birds. The eagle screams, the owl hoots, the wild goose honks, the crow caws, but none of these discordant sound's can be called singing.

With the poet, the singing of birds means merry, light-hearted joyousness, and most of us are poetic enough to view it in the same way. Birds sing most in the spring and the early summer, those happiest seasons of the year, while employed in nest-building and in rearing their young. Many of our musical singers are silent all the rest of the year; at least they utter only low chirpings.

Outside of what are properly classed as song birds there are many species that never pretend to sing; in fact, these far outnumber the musicians.. They include the water birds of every kind, both swimmers and waders; all the birds of prey, eagles, hawks, owls, and vultures; and all the gallinaceous tribes, comprising pheasants, partridges, turkeys, and chickens. The gobble of the turkey cock, the defiant crow of the "bob-white," are none of them true singing; yet it is quite probable that all of these sounds are uttered with precisely similar motives to those that inspire the sweet warbling of the songsparrow, the clear whistle of the robin, or the thrilling music of the woodthrush. — Philadelphia Times.