The past summer I saw the most charming baby-bird of my life. He was
so tiny and silvery, his upper feathers such a lovely olive-green and
the under plumage such soft white, and over the bright, innocent little
eyes a beautiful curving line like an eyebrow. I did not at first
recognize him, but the next day I saw two, probably of the same flock,
hunting very industriously over an old tree, and I knew they were the
young red eyed vireos. Their feathers were all new and fresh, and that
made them look so silvery and the tints seem so clear.
The same summer I became very well acquainted with a different set
of bird-babies. They were still younger, for their feathers had a
soft, downy look, and fluffed out so that they really looked larger
than their tiny parents. They were silver gray, the little blue-gray
gnat-catchers, and nothing could be more charming than the way they
twinkled about the bushes, or turned somersaults in the air to catch
flying insects on the wing. Their little songs, as low as whispers,
their call-notes "like a banjo-string" _ting!_ and even their low
scoldings, were very pretty, and seemed to belong to them perfectly.
Someone, who did not know birds very well called them little wrens,
and they really had a good many of the restless movements and alert
attitudes of these birds, but their habits are totally different. For
instance, their life begins in a lichened cup high up among the top
boughs and it is only in the late summer, when birds break their rules
and go as they please for a brief holiday time before the migration,
that you will see the gnat-catchers come down to the low bushes. I can
hardly believe it myself, but I once saw a young one picking away on
the ground.
One charm about the tiny birds, gnat-catchers, chebecks, vireos,
kinglets, and the like, is that they are not usually so shy as large,
handsome birds, and I have often had them almost within touch, singing,
feeding, preening their feathers, in the loveliest and most confiding
way.