In the forest where the birds live there is always work to do.
[Illustration]
The woodpecker is a carpenter. He climbs up and down the trees and
chops a hole in the trunk of one of them to make his home.
The crow flies down to the ground, and walks about in the fields.
He is the birds’ farmer. Toward evening, when he cries, “Caw! Caw!” he
means that the earth needs rain.
The owl is the night policeman. He watches the rats and mice, and keeps
them out of the farmer’s fields.
The kingbirds are the soldiers. They fight the birds that come over
from the next forest, and drive them away.
The hawks have sharp eyes, and can see a long way. They are the scouts,
and tell the soldiers when the enemy is coming.
The whip-poor-wills can see in the night, so they are the birds’ night
watchmen.
The orioles are weavers. They weave their nests, and hang them in the
tallest trees.
One of the birds is a thief, and steals eggs from the nests of the
other birds, but I shall not tell you _his_ name.
So all of the birds have work to do in the forest.
What do the song birds do? Ah! they have their work, too. They sing
cheerfully while the other birds work, and make the hours short and the
day happy.
They sing of the goodness of God, and of the beauty in the forest and
sky.
If there were no song birds, the workers might forget all of these
lovely things. Then their hearts would be as hard as the tree the
woodpecker is chopping.
One spring morning the song birds were singing so beautifully that
every one listened.
The woodpeckers cried, “Plitt! plitt!” The crows screamed, “Rah! rah!”
and the blackbirds laughed with glee. This meant that they liked the
songs.
In the nests were many baby birds. They liked to hear the songs, too,
so they stretched up their little heads.
But _they_ could not understand the songs about the sky and the forest.
You see, they had not seen these things yet, and they did not know
what the songs meant.
The poor babies drooped their heads and were very sad.
[Illustration]
There was one bird who thought of the babies in the nests, for he had a
kind heart, and loved little things.
“I will fly down and sing for them,” he thought; “perhaps it will make
them happy.”
So he flew into a little bush, quite near the ground, and sang the
sweetest song he knew. Over and over again he sang it, and the babies
in the nests listened all the time.
“He is singing about the warm sunshine,” said the baby robins.
“He is singing about rocking in this beautiful cradle,” said the baby
orioles.
Then, as the song grew sweeter and sweeter, “Listen, listen!” they
cried. “Now he is singing about our mother. That is the best song of
all.”
So the song sparrow sang in the little bush, telling the babies about
the sun and the breezes and their mothers’ love.
He waked them in the morning; he sang them to sleep at night.
Have you never heard him singing, “Sweet, sweet, sweet, loving little
mother, sweet”?
—_Etta Austin Blaisdell._