The Goat and Her Kid - Harriet Myrtle (the dot read aloud TXT) 📗

n the beginning of June, when the young birds have got nearly all their principal feathers, but have not yet learned to fly, it is a sad thing if by any accident one of them tumbles out of the nest. This misfortune sometimes happens when a nest is too full. Five or six little birds are a good many for a nest no bigger than a teacup; and there are often as many as five. We have also to recollect that these young things are always very wild, and impatient, and unreasonable, and make a great fluttering together, and scramble and climb over each other, especially when their mother brings them food in her bill. There is, of course, not enough food for all of them at once, but they all try to get it at once, and some of them are naughty and greedy, and try to get a second morsel before their brothers and sisters have had any at all. Now, the careful mother-bird knows this very well, and she, therefore, divides everything among them, so that each has a bit in turn, and while she feeds them she begs the rest to be as patient as they can, and not flutter, and chirrup, and gape so widely, and above all things, to mind they do not tumble, or push each other, over the edge of the nest.

It happened one day that this very accident occurred in a hedge-sparrow's nest which had been built in the largest branch of a hawthorn-tree. This tree grew in the middle of a hedge that went round a large field, where there were at this time a number of haymakers, all very busy with the hay. While some were tossing the hay about in order to spread it out in the sun and dry it, others were raking up the hay that was already dry enough, and piling it up into haycocks. Men and women, and boys and girls too, were all at work in this way, and singing in the sun as they tossed the hay with forks, or raked it up with large wooden rakes. When the hay was thus moved about on the field, a frog sometimes jumped up, and went silently leaping away towards the hedge; and sometimes a field-mouse sprang out from the short grass, with a loud squeak, and ran off to hide himself in the hedge, squeaking all the way, not because he was in the least hurt, but because he had waked in a great fright.

At the same time that all this was going on, the sparrow, whose nest was in the hawthorn-tree, had brought a few seeds and a morsel of crust to her young ones. The seed she distributed with ease, but the morsel of crust was rather hard, and required her to pinch and peck it a good deal with her bill before it could be soft enough for the young birds. The young ones, however, were all so anxious to be first to receive the crust the moment it was ready, that they all began to make a loud chirruping, and scrambling, and pushing, and fluttering, and trampling, and climbing over each other, till at last two of them were on the very edge of the nest, and had each got hold of the crust. But the mother-bird did not approve of such rudeness, so she took it away from them in her own bill just as the two were beginning to pull with all their might, standing on opposite sides of the nest. They could not recover themselves, but over they went, fluttering down into the tree. One fell into the next bough below, but the other went fluttering into the hedge under the tree. The mother helped the nearest one up again into the nest, by showing it how to hop and fly from branch to branch; the other, however, was too low down, so there sat the unfortunate little fellow all alone upon a twig, chirruping and looking up in vain at his lost nest.