Identifier: birdsnature9101unse (find matches)
Title: Birds and nature
Year: 1900 (1900s)
Authors:
Subjects: Birds Natural history
Publisher: Chicago, Ill. : A.W. Mumford, Publisher
Contributing Library: University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Digitizing Sponsor: University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

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anupper branch, where he could watch un-tiringly over the safety of the belovednest and all day long, in bright or cloudyweather, floated down to his silent matea song of courage and tenderness. Ah, no shepherds in far-off Arcadyever piped more sweetly to their belovedthan this winged lover ! His note is wildand free, a touch of anxious pleading per-haps in the brooding song that one doesnot catch in the first triumphant cry ofjoy with which he flashes upon our sightin April, but inexpressibly sweet andliquid. It is essentially music of the pipes,like the soft airs blown by lips of happychildren upon reeds cut from the brook-side in the first joyous days of spring, butit is different in its airy quality, as if amelody, unfinished, were floating farabove our heads ! They are loving house-holders, and, if undisturbed, will return,year after year, to the same next. Happy is the Dryad that dwells in anoak where the orioles build and sing! Ella F. Mosby. 193 LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS
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THE MARBLED GODWIT. (Limosa fedoa.) —I beholdThe godwits running by the water edge,The mossy bridges mirrored as of old; The little curlews creeping from the sedge. —Jean Ingelow, The Four Bridges. The Godwits form an interesting groupof the shore birds (Limicolae) and belongin the same family as the snipes and sand-pipers. They command attention notalone because of their habits, but alsobecause they have for centuries beenconsidered a delicate food for man, andmuch has been written in praise of theirflesh. Early in the sixteenth century one ofthe European species was rated as worththree times as much as the snipe, andwas considered a delicacy of the Frenchepicure. We are told that the black-tailed Godwit in the year 1766 was soldin England for half-a-crown. Ben Jon-son speaks enthusiastically of this bird asa delicate morsel for the appetite. The origin of the name Godwit isveiled in obscurity. It has been sug-gested that it may be a corruption of thetwo words good and the antiqu

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