Men did, indeed, bring the pestilent sparrows which swarm
about their habitations here, and beat away the gentler and lovelier
birds with a ferocity unknown in the human occupation of the islands.
Still, the sparrows have by no means conquered, and in the wilder places
the catbird makes common cause with the bluebird and the redbird, and
holds its own against them. The little ground-doves mimic in miniature
the form and markings and the gait and mild behavior of our turtle-doves,
but perhaps not their melancholy cooing. Nature has nowhere anything
prettier than these exquisite creatures, unless it be the long-tailed
white gulls which sail over the emerald shallows of the landlocked seas,
and take the green upon their translucent bodies as they trail their
meteoric splendor against the midday sky. Full twenty-four inches they
measure from the beak to the tip of the single pen that protracts them a
foot beyond their real bulk; but it is said their tempers are shorter
than they, and they attack fiercely anything they suspect of too intimate
a curiosity concerning their nests.
They are probably the only short-tempered things in the Summer Islands,
where time is so long that if you lose your patience you easily find it
again. Sweetness, if not light, seems to be the prevailing human
quality, and a good share of it belongs to such of the natives as are in
no wise light.
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