Evidently He Had Contracted To Deliver Just So
Many Warnings Per Diem; And Invariably He Got So Busy Chasing
Insects, Enjoying The Sun, Gossiping With A Friend And Generally
Footling About That The Late Afternoon Caught Him Unawares With
Never A Chirp Accomplished.
So he sat in a bush and said his say
over and over just as fast as he could without pause for breath
or recreation.
It was really quite a feat. Just at dusk, after
two hours of gabbling, he would reach the end of his contracted
number. With final relieved chirp he ended.
It has been said that African birds are "songless." This is a
careless statement that can easily be read to mean that African
birds are silent. The writer evidently must have had in mind as a
criterion some of our own or the English great feathered
soloists. Certainly the African jungle seems to produce no
individual performers as sustained as our own bob-o-link, our
hermit thrush, or even our common robin. But the African birds
are vocal enough, for all that. Some of them have a richness and
depth of timbre perhaps unequalled elsewhere. Of such is the
chime-bird with his deep double note; or the bell-bird tolling
like a cathedral in the blackness of the forest; or the bottle
bird that apparently pours gurgling liquid gold from a silver
jug. As the jungle is exceedingly populous of these feathered
specialists, it follows that the early morning chorus is
wonderful.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 84 of 371
Words from 21715 to 21965
of 97210
