Early last summer, while standing on my back steps, I heard a cheerful
voice say, “You’re a pretty bird. Where are you?” I supposed it to be
the voice of a Parrot, but wondered how any Parrot could talk loud
enough to be heard at that distance, for the houses on the street back
of us are quite a way off.
Almost before I had done laughing, the voice came again, clear, musical,
and strong—“You’re a pretty bird. Where are you?”
For several days I endured the suspense of waiting for time to
investigate. Then I chased him up. There he was in the top of a walnut
tree, his gorgeous attire telling me immediately that he was a
Rose-breasted Grosbeak.
At the end of a week he varied his compliment to, “Pretty, pretty bird,
where are you? Where are you?” with a kind of impatient jerk on the last
“you.”
He and his mate stayed near us all last summer, and though I heard him
talk a hundred times, yet he always brought a feeling of gladness and a
laugh.
Our friend has come back again this spring. About May 1st I heard the
same endearing compliment as before.
Several of my friends whom I have told about him have asked, “Does he
say the words plainly? Do you mean that he really talks?” My reply is,
“He says them just as plainly as a bird ever says anything, so plainly,
that even now I laugh whenever I hear him.”
He is not very easily frightened, and sometimes talks quite a while when
I am standing under the tree where he is.
—Emily B. Pellet, Worcester, Mass., in _Bird-Lore_.