CHAPTER XIV.. Umbrellas and Other Things.

UMBRELLAS AND OTHER THINGS.

There is more fun than you can imagine in watching the birds in your yard for just one single day. If you are a sick child and cannot go to school, the day will never seem long when once you have begun to get acquainted with these dear little people. If you look a bird straight in the eye when you have a chance to hold one in your hand, you cannot hurt him if you have a bit of a kind heart in your jacket.

Birds' faces are sweet and happy and beautiful, even if they are covered with feathers. You will notice that they have different expressions at different times. But a bird's eye, whether it is black, or red, or white, will tell the story of its fear or happiness as plainly as your own. You may wonder how that can be, when there are no wrinkles to be seen about the face.

We have seen birds do a great many bright things, and we have seen them do stupid things as well. There are wide cracks in our woodshed, and the towhees go through these cracks to the inside in search of something to eat, or just out of curiosity.

When we open the shed door suddenly, the birds are in a great fright. They seem to have forgotten just where they came in, and they flutter about to all the cracks, trying to squeeze their way through, until they find the right one. They do this almost every day, never learning to count or to mark the crack in any way. This is very stupid of the towhees, and we laugh at their shrill squeaks, and their silly way of trying every hole without regard to their size.

These towhees are full of curiosity. There is a rabbit's cage in the yard, and the birds try all day to get in. Sometimes we leave the door ajar, and in they hop. Then what a time. Squealing and fluttering, they fly about as if they were scared nearly to death. We let them out again, and they will hop to a log near by and preen themselves, and in five minutes they have forgotten what happened. Back they fly to the cage again, and are not satisfied till they find a way to get in.

They wait coaxingly about the door, as if they would give anything for a ticket of admission. Once a curious little towhee squeezed itself into the owl's cage, and we had hard work to get it out alive; and then what should the stupid little thing do but go straight for the canary's cage, hanging under a tree on the lawn. If we want to hold a towhee in our hands for any reason, we have but to set a cage on the grass with the door open, and in a few minutes we have the bird.

We are reminded of something about birds which John Webster wrote more than two hundred years ago. He must have been a bird lover. When speaking of a summer bird-cage in a garden, he observed, "The birds that are without, despair to get in; and the birds that are within, despair for fear they will never get out."

Did you ever stand at the window when it is raining and wonder what the birds do without umbrellas? Of course you have, but you are a little mistaken if you suppose they do not have umbrellas and parasols. Their umbrellas are all about, in the trees and fence corners and bushes, just where they are needed.

See the birds cuddle under a bunch of leaves during a smart shower. See them hunt for the shadiest places when the sun shines warm. Of course they do not carry their umbrellas about with them, tucked under their arms, but they fly quickly to places where they are sure the umbrellas are to be found.

Once in February a humming-bird built her frail little nest close to the path on the low limb of a tree in our yard. Now this eucalyptus tree was very nearly a hundred feet high, and we wondered that the bird built so near the ground, when she might have been so far above. We liked to fancy that she suspected we would not harm her, and that we might possibly help her some if she should happen to be in trouble. She was right, for we did help her in a way we could not have done had she built her nest in the top of the tree.

A fierce hail storm came down from the mountains, and we knew the eggs would be destroyed if we did not protect them. There sat the tiny mother on her frail nest, the great drops of water running off from the point of her slender bill and down over her soft, small sides. We felt very sorry, but you know that just feeling sorry for those who are in trouble doesn't help them very much. So we went to the attic and found an old sunshade which we had put away under the rafters at the close of the summer. We thought it would be just the thing, and so it was.

We tied it to a twig just above the hummer's nest. The mother flew off just for a moment, but came right back. Then she looked at the black roof over the nest and settled down on her eggs quite satisfied, while we stood close by her, wet to the skin in the rain and sleet. It was a long storm, lasting until the eggs were hatched, but the mother was safe, and the baby birds were never wet at all. Since then we have looked all about the yard for humming-birds' nests just before a storm, that we might shelter them.

You have noticed that there are different birds about your yard at different times in the year. Birds are like other people, they like to travel and see the world. They like to visit their friends and get something to eat different from what they have at home.

But birds are very sensible people. They do not pack a valise or a great trunkful of clothes when they go on a long journey. They have one good travelling dress, and they keep that tidy. When they get to the end of their trip, they do not have to annoy their friends with baggage. Probably their visit is all the more welcome. And their visits are usually short. It seems as if they do not want to wear out their welcome.

Of course you have wondered how birds travel, never needing a street, or a railroad track, or a bicycle, or a boat. Perhaps the birds wonder, too, how it is that we never take a flight up into the blue sky, or rest ourselves in the trees, always keeping on the ground in the grass or dust, or in our houses. Perhaps they puzzle their tiny brains to know how it is that we can walk so far without getting tired, and how it is that we are obliged to climb a tree on all fours, like a bear or a squirrel, if we wish to get the nuts which are far up out of reach.

There is no telling what the birds think about us. The same Great One who made the birds with hollow bones and quills, and who filled many little cells of their bodies with air, so that the little creatures might be light of weight and buoyant to fly, also made us of heavier weight and greater strength of muscle.

The birds are not inventors, but man has invented the steam-engine, and the bicycle, and the sail-boat, so that we have come as near flying as we possibly can without being birds.

Almost every boy tries to fly, and he thinks there is some secret about it which he can find out, if he is only patient enough. He gets up on a high fence, and he flaps his arms for wings, and he plays that he is going to fly to the next town. The birds, looking on, must laugh heartily.

Perhaps if the boy's body were boat-shaped, like a bird's body, and if his legs were put midway between the two ends of his body like a bird's legs, the boy would come nearer flying. But more than all, he would need a good strong pair of wings. We have never seen a boy yet who had wings of any sort.