The clearing around the house is flooded with
sunlight. In the wooded pasture some trunks are bathed with a golden
glory, while others yet stand iron gray in the deep shadows. The
world is awake. The day's work begins. One late young redhead in a
hole high up in the decaying trunk of an aspen tree calls loudly for
his breakfast, redoubling his noise as his mother approaches with the
first course. Sitting clumsily on a big stump, a big baby cowbird,
well able to shift for himself, shamelessly takes food from his little
field sparrow foster-mother, scarcely more than half his size. Soon he
will leave her and join the flocks of his kindred in the oat-fields
and the swamps. Young chewinks are being fed down among the ripening
May-apples in the pasture. A catbird with soft "quoots" assembles her
family in the hazel and the wood-thrush sounds warning "quirts" as
fancied peril approaches her children beneath the ripening
blackberries. From the top of a tall white oak a red squirrel leaps to
the arching branches of an elm, continuing his foraging there. Sitting
straight up on a mossy log the chipmunk holds in his paws a bit of
bread thrown from somebody's basket, nibbles at it for a while and
then makes a dash for the thicket, carrying the bread in his mouth.
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