Flivver

“ Thereupon the Professor and Peter went down stairs, and Flip could hear no more. He felt sick at heart. Even if this was Pipi, it was clear enough he was going to die. If he got nothing better than crumbs and milk, how in the name of all that’s feathered was he going to live? “What stupid creatures these men-folks are!” thought Flip; and perhaps he was not far wrong. But he did not know what a professor meant, and he was not aware that the genial old gentleman from the distant University knew almost as much about the food of willow-warblers as he did himself. ”

“ Flip screamed and fought, biting and clawing like a little wild beast, and the night was full of her screams and the man's snarls and the banging of boards and shutters and the cries of disturbed birds. Neither of them saw when a shutter was blown loose from a turret window and came flying down to strike Flip on the head. She dropped like a wounded bird to the snow and lay there, motionless. She did not see the man staring at her limp body in horror, nor know when he picked her up and went into the chateau with her and dumped her there in the dark, a small inert bundle on the stone floor. ”

“ Then, and only then, are they thoroughly at home, and, making use of nothing but the powerful scaly flippers, dart about with the rapidity of a fish. Frequently the old bird will rise to the surface with a young one balanced on each flipper, maintained in its precarious position by the grasp of its own tiny paddles, and no doubt vastly enjoying this introduction to life and the novel experiences to be met with under water. ”

“ One day when I was watching the stump, a male flicker came with food, and alighted at the lower door, upon which a young bird put his bill out and was fed in the murderous-looking fashion of the flickers. Papa thrust his long beak down baby's throat, and gave several vicious-looking pokes, as if to hammer something down. While I was musing over this strange way of feeding, the bird left, and a female flicker appeared. She glanced into the open door, and then to my surprise slipped half around the trunk and a foot higher, and stopped before the other hole, which I had not noticed till then. ”

“ Sometimes he appeared suddenly behind Emma, bareheaded, and she drew back with a cry. Hivert made fun of him. He would advise him to get a booth at the Saint Romain fair, or else ask him, laughing, how his young woman was.
Often they had started when, with a sudden movement, his hat entered the diligence through the small window, while he clung with his other arm to the footboard, between the wheels splashing mud. His voice, feeble at first and quavering, grew sharp; it resounded in the night like the indistinct moan of a vague distress ”

“ Give me color in music, polychromes. Give me color in life. The flare of rocket jets, the blackness of space, a spinning wheel in a big crystal casino—
I'd stay one week on Earth! Then I'd be off again and never come back. I'd bury myself in the farthest—
"Give him his head!" Pete yelled.
Flipover had swerved and was heading for a narrow walk leading to a fairly large circular house surrounded by a garden plot bright with yellow flowers. There was a fountain in the middle of the garden and it was sending up jets of spray which drenched Flipover as he tore down the path. ”

“ With a piercing shriek Whirlwind turned and mounted quickly upward. He passed with a howl through the open window in the roof, and then his form was changed, but what it was now no one knew or was able to describe, for as often as any one opened eyes to look at him he filled them with dust and water; if any one sniffed him he made them sneeze; if any one tried to lay hands upon him he buffeted them in the chest and turned them about like weather vanes, all the while crying out, "What is my shape?" Only pigs could see him and knew of what shape he was and they had no powers of description. ”

“ Flicker at his own door, and he perched himself in his hiding-place of leaves and watched the gray stump with an air of settled gloom.
However, a bird is a bird, even though it be a serious flicker, and before many minutes he and his wife were chatting happily again. Mrs. Flicker even asserted boldly that if she had not her eggs to look after, she would certainly investigate this thing; and then Mr. Flicker began to preen his feathers as if in preparation for the undertaking, but really to gain time and get up his courage, when, "Take care! Take care!" ”

“ Having had to fight his way in the world, Flip had developed a wonderful sharpness of intellect at a very early age, and Dowker turned this hunger-educated instinct to good account, for he often set the little urchin to follow cabs, run messages, and do other small matters which he required. Flip performed all these duties so well and promptly that Dowker began to take an interest in him, and set to work to cultivate this stunted flower which had sprung up amid the evil weeds of the slums. ”

“ THE BANDED EPEIRA. BUILDING THE WEB.
The fowling-snare is one of man's ingenious villainies. With lines, pegs and poles, two large, earth-coloured nets are stretched upon the ground, one to the right, the other to the left of a bare surface. A long cord, pulled at the right moment by the fowler, who hides in a brushwood hut, works them and brings them together suddenly, like a pair of shutters. ”

“ Like the fur-seal, its propulsion through water is the work entirely of its powerful fore-flippers, which are simultaneously struck out, both together, and back against the water, feathering forward again to repeat, while the hind flippers are simply used as a rudder oar in deflecting an ever-varying swift and abrupt course of the animal. ”

“ We can see distinctly the short thighs and the long shanks, which give the hind flippers their lanky appearance, and we see, too, the broad stumpy arms, which give such strength to the front flippers in swimming. For the eared seals and walruses use their fore flippers very much in the water, while the true seals swim almost entirely with the hind flippers, and use the front ones chiefly for guiding themselves. ”

“ At the moment which precedes their exit, the buzzing increases in the hive. Some of the workers go out first, as if to ascertain the state of the atmosphere. The moment the queen has passed the threshold, the emigrants follow in a cloud behind her; in an instant the air is darkened with bees, which crowd together and form a thick cloud. The swarm rises, whirling round about in the air; it poises itself for a few minutes over the hive, to allow time to reconnoitre, and for the laggards to join, and then goes off at full speed. ”

“ The Imbrine Diver, L'Imbrim of Buffon, is also a fine bird of blackish plumage shaded with white, the belly and a ring round the neck being also white. The head is of a changeable black and green colour. When it has young, in place of diving under water, as its ordinary habit is when threatened, it boldly attacks its enemies with its beak. Its skin serves the Greenlanders as clothing. It inhabits the Arctic seas of both hemispheres, is abundant about the Hebrides, in Norway, in Sweden, and even on the coast of Scotland. ”

“ Each time the cock bird returned from a flight, or brought food to his wife, he looked, in spite of himself, a little graver. But she sat close, only starting once or twice from the nest when the distant crack of a gun was heard.
“Sit close, sit close,” said her consort, “and remember that the way to get shot is to leave the nest. We are perfectly safe here, and I will be hiding in the bank at hand, if any danger should threaten.”
As he spoke, men passed along the track; then more, and others on the grass on each side of it. ”

“ The willow-warblers do not all take flight together to their inland haunts after their arrival from the sea, but work their way gradually through woods and hedges, refreshing and strengthening themselves as they go. The party to which Flip and Twinkle belonged had not far to go to get to the meadow by the brook, of which Pipi had reminded Twinkle on the fishing-smack—the meadow where they themselves had reared their brood last year, and close to another, not less delicious, where they themselves had been born. ”

“ Now if they had been the sparrows, or the robins, or the red-winged blackbirds, they would have gone on chattering and contradicting until they came to using claws and bills, and many feathers would have been shed; but they were the quiet, well-bred Flickers, and so they stopped just here, and once more critically regarded the object in question.
"Whoever heard of a stump, old and gray and moss-covered, appearing in one night?" said Mr. Flicker, after a pause. "I have seen more of the world than you have, my dear, and I do assure you it would take centuries to make a stump like that." ”

“ The anterior extremities or flippers of the seal are not engaged in swimming, but only in balancing and in changing position. When so employed the fore feet open and close, though not to the same extent as the hind ones; the resistance and non-resistance necessary being secured by a partial rotation and tilting of the flippers. By this twisting and untwisting, the narrow edges and broader portions of the flippers are applied to the water alternately. ”

“ When, worn with fatigue and driven desperate by his vain attempts to get away, the sufferer lies down flat and refuses to do his duty, the fowler is able to stimulate him without stirring from his hut. A long string sets in motion a little lever working on a pivot. Raised from the ground by this diabolical contrivance, the bird flies, falls down and flies up again at each jerk of the cord. ”

“ Quite a respectable colony of flickers found a home during the winter in my favorite woodland. Unlike the other birds mentioned, they do not wade about in the snow. No; to their minds, a bare tree-wall is the desideratum for a tramping-ground; and if they need more exercise than promenading affords them, they can take to wing and go bounding from one part of the woods to another. A flicker is a staid bird when he doesn’t happen to be in a playful mood. ”

“ I WOULD not attack that spider again, senhor, if I were you. You have seen for yourself that you can not hit him. No matter how quickly you strike, he is inches away when the blow falls.
Those huge, bird-killing spiders all are incredibly swift. I have heard that not even a bullet is fast enough to kill one—that at the flash of the gun he jumps so quickly that the whole seven inches of him is out of danger when the shot strikes. Whether that be true or not, I know you will never hit him with your fist; you will only tire yourself out. ”

“ When I succeeded in getting lower down, and could see the white foam of the waves, I suddenly saw a light below me, and a little in front, twinkling like a great hawk’s eye, and—”
“The lighthouse!” cried Flip, with a pang, for he felt sure that the worst part of the story was coming.
“No, not the lighthouse,” said Twinkle. “Don’t interrupt. You’re a most unpleasant bird to tell a story to, stopping one just in the most exciting part: it quite spoils the pleasure of story-telling.” ”

“ The angler was puzzled. To swim in a current like that with a bird in your hand was impossible without crushing it; and a naked man has no pockets. But necessity is the mother of invention. Quick as thought he whipped a casting-line off his hat, taking two flies off it and sticking them into his coat: this he wound round his friend’s wrist, and making the end fast, told him to tie it round the bird’s leg if he reached him.
Carefully into the water his companion descended, feeling with his hand for the first stepping-stone ”

“ On the under side of the flipper the skin is entirely bare from [Pg 260] its outer extremity up to the body-connection. It is sensibly tougher and thicker than elsewhere on the body; it is deeply and regularly wrinkled with seams and furrows, which cross one another so as to leave a kind of sharp diamond-cut pattern. When they are placed by the animal upon the smoothest rocks, shining and slippery from algoid growths and the sea-polish of restless waters, they seldom fail to adhere. ”

“ She leant with both hands against the window, drinking in the breeze; the three horses galloped, the stones grated in the mud, the diligence rocked, and Hivert, from afar, hailed the carts on the road, while the bourgeois who had spent the night at the Guillaume woods came quietly down the hill in their little family carriages.
They stopped at the barrier; Emma undid her overshoes, put on other gloves, rearranged her shawl, and some twenty paces farther she got down from the "Hirondelle." ”

“ THE LARGEST STUB CONTAINED SIX EGGS ON THE POINT OF HATCHING JULY 7, 1908, WHEN THIS PICTURE WAS TAKEN.
In the early days of April courtship is in progress, and the love-making of the Flicker is both the most curious and the most conspicuous of anything in that order. An infatuated Flicker is a very soft and foolish-looking bird, but it must be admitted that he thoroly understands the feminine heart and succeeds in love beyond the luck of most. A bevy of suitors will lay siege to the affections of a fair lady, say in the top of a sycamore tree. ”

“ When they are on the shore, the immense spread of their wings induces them to choose some elevated spot for a perch, such as the top of a tree or the summit of a rock. Worn out by fatigue, if they settle on the water, they are forced to wait until they are lifted up on the crest of a wave before they can again take flight. Their mode of flying is rather curious, for they communicate to their wings a kind of quivering motion, as if overcome by exhaustion. ”

“ Man has wild beast’s blood in his veins. The fowler hastens to the slaughter. With his thumb, he stifles the beating of the captives’ hearts, staves in their skulls. The little birds, so many piteous heads of game, will go to market, strung in dozens on a wire passed through their nostrils.
For scoundrelly ingenuity the Epeira’s net can bear comparison with the fowler’s; it even surpasses it when, on patient study, the main features of its supreme perfection stand revealed. What refinement of art for a mess of Flies! ”