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Varied Thrush (Zoothera naevia) (Male), Black Creek, Northern Vancouver Island, British Columbia: photo by Elaine R. Wilson, 2011
He was a heath-cutter's child, the eldest of seven children! They were very poor, but he could earn nothing himself, except by gathering whortleberries in their season; then he said, all seven of them turned out with their parents, the youngest in its mother's arms. I questioned him about the birds of the district; he stoutly maintained that he recognised only four, and proceeded to name them.
"Here is another," said I, "a fifth you didn't name, singing in the bushes half a dozen yards from where we stand -- the best singer of all."
"I did name it," he returned, "that's a thrush."
It was a nightingale, a bird he did not know. But he knew a thrush -- it was one of the four birds he knew, and he stuck to it that it was a thrush singing.
W. H. Hudson: from A Surrey Village, in A Traveller in Little Things, 1921
W. H. Hudson: from A Surrey Village, in A Traveller in Little Things, 1921
Funny -- I posted something here, which appears to have disappeared. I guess all the virtual (for whom the) bell tolling yesterday disturbed the electronic atmosphere. I think I was just remarking on the beauty of the varied thrush and the lively spirit shown by the boy. I admire both.
ReplyDeleteCurtis,
ReplyDeleteThat's a mystery, and a shame.
Here's how Hudson got to know that lad, in his descent into Surrey:
"But the children were almost invariably too small for their years. The most stunted specimen was a little boy I met near Hindhead. He was thin, with a dry wizened face, and looked at the most about eight years old; he assured me that he was twelve. I engaged this gnome-like creature to
carry something for me, and we had three or four miles' ramble together.
"A curious couple we must have seemed--a giant and a pigmy, the pigmy looking considerably older than the giant."
That's ok -- I stated the gist of it. What a great, great Hudson anecdote. Curtis
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