[Gutenberg 25600] • Bird Stories

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

For help in planning this book, for sharing his bird-notes with the writer, and for a critical reading of the manuscript, acknowledgment should be made to Mr. Robert J. Sim. Certain events in the lives of Eve and Petro and little Solomon Otus are told with reference to his observations of eave-swallows and screech owls; his trip to an island off the Maine coast for gull-sketches added greatly to an acquaintance with Larie; and but for his six-weeks' visit with the loons of "Immer Lake," much of the story of Gavia could not have been told. Since Mr. Sim contributed not only the pictures to the book, but many items of interest to the narrative, it gives the writer pleasure to acknowledge his coöperation, both as artist and as field-naturalist.

Edith M. Patch

I. CHICK, D.D.

Right in the very heart of Christmas-tree Land there was a forest of firs that pointed to the sky as straight as steeples. A hush lay over the forest, as if there were something very wonderful there, that might be meant for you if you were quiet and waited for it to come. Perhaps you have felt like that when you walked down the aisle of a church, with the sun shining through the lovely glass in the windows. Men have often called the woods "temples"; so there is, after all, nothing so very strange in having a preacher live in the midst of the fir forest that grew in Christmas-tree Land.

And the sermon itself was not very strange, for it was about peace and good-will and love and helping the world and being happy—all very proper things to hear about while the bells in the city churches, way, way off, were ringing their glad messages from the steeples.

But the minister was a queer one, and his very first words would have made you smile. Not that you would have laughed at him, you know. You would have smiled just because he had a way of making you feel happy from the minute he began.

He sat on a small branch, and looked down from his pulpit with a dear nod of his little head, which would have made you want to cuddle him in the hollow of your two hands.

CONTENTS

1\. Chick, D.D.

2\. The Five Worlds of Larie

3\. Peter Piper

4\. Gavia of Immer Lake

5\. Eve and Petro

6\. Uncle Sam

7\. Corbie

8\. Ardea's Soldier

9\. The Flying Clown

10\. The Lost Dove

11\. Little Solomon Otus

12\. Bob, the Vagabond

ILLUSTRATIONS

Chick, D.D. in his pulpit

Firs that pointed to the sky

"Woodland Music after an Ice-Storm"

Birds, too, that had lived in rough winds

Floated beside him in the sea another gull, to whom he talked pleasantly

After Larie found a clam, he would fly high into the air and then drop it

It was not for food alone that Larie and his mate lived that spring

One was named Peter, for his father

The spot she teetered to most of all

Dallying happily along the river-edge

Immer Lake

Two babies, not yet out of their eggshells, hidden among the rushes

While their children were napping, Gavia and Father Loon went to a party

At Work in the Plaster Pit

The Hunting Flight

They always chatted a bit and then went on with their work, placing their plaster carefully

Quaint Clay Pottery

A Famous Landmark

Above all other creatures of this great land he had been honored

The Yankee-Doodle Twins

In this Mother Crow had laid her eggs

"Kah! Kah! Kah!" he called from sun-up to sun-down

Corbie slipped off and amused himself

She wore, draped from her shoulders, snowy plumes of rare beauty

Near Ardea's Home

That criss-cross pile of old dead twigs was a dear home, and they both guarded it

The Flying Clown

Peaceful e