I never heard anything like it!" he exclaimed, then
trudged off to his work.
Like most Englishmen, he had, no doubt, a
vein of poetic feeling hidden away somewhere in his soul.
We also had the other kind of concert-singing by another species in
the plantation. This was the common purple cow-bird, one of the
Troupial family, exclusively American, but supposed to have affinities
with the starlings of the Old World. This cow-bird is parasitical
(like the European cuckoo) in its breeding habits, and having no
domestic affairs of its own to attend to it lives in flocks all the
year round, leading an idle vagabond life. The male is of a uniform
deep purple-black, the female a drab or mouse-colour. The cow-birds
were excessively numerous among the trees in summer, perpetually
hunting for nests in which to deposit their eggs: they fed on the
ground out on the plain and were often in such big flocks as to look
like a huge black carpet spread out on the green sward. On a rainy day
they did not feed: they congregated on the trees in thousands and sang
by the hour. Their favourite gathering-place at such times was behind
the house, where the trees grew pretty thick and were sheltered on two
sides by the black acacias and double rows of Lombardy poplars,
succeeded by double rows of large mulberry trees, forming walks, and
these by pear, apple and cherry trees. From whichever side the wind
blew it was calm here, and during the heaviest rain the birds would
sit here in their thousands, pouring out a continuous torrent of song,
which resembled the noise produced by thousands of starlings at
roosting-time, but was louder and differed somewhat in character owing
to the peculiar song of the cow-bird, which begins with hollow
guttural sounds, followed by a burst of loud clear ringing notes.
These concert-singers, the little green and yellow field finch and the
purple cow-bird, were with us all the year round, with many others
which it would take a whole chapter to tell of. When, in July and
August, I watched for the coming spring, it was the migrants, the
birds that came annually to us from the far north, that chiefly
attracted me. Before their arrival the bloom was gone from the peach
trees, and the choir of countless little finches broken up and
scattered all over the plain. Then the opening leaves were watched,
and after the willows the first and best-loved were the poplars.
During all the time they were opening, when they were still a
yellowish-green in colour, the air was full of the fragrance, but not
satisfied with that I would crush and rub the new small leaves in my
hands and on my face to get the delicious balsamic smell in fuller
measure. And of all the trees, after the peach, the poplars appeared
to feel the new season with the greatest intensity, for it seemed to
me that they felt the sunshine even as I did, and they expressed it in
their fragrance just as the peach and other trees did in their
flowers.
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