A blue-jay then commenced a loud call from a distant part of the forest. He is one of the birds that lingers behind, and braves the blasts of winter. He was flitting about in a tree-top, and had just commenced his day's work. How gaudily Nature has dressed this bird! How he shines, during spring and summer! All the shades, and touches, and tinges of blue flow over his gaudy mantle; and how orderly and lavishly they are strown over him. But the blue-jay is a dissolute kind of a fellow, after all--"neither more nor less than a thief," Venison says. His shadowy dress fades with the leaf, and after strutting about during the warmer months, making a great display of his finery, he "runs down," at last, into a confirmed loafer. Groups of them may be seen in the winter, drudging around among the withered bushes, and scolding like so many shrews.
Then out popped the little _gopher_, that finished piece of stripe and check, that miner, who digs deep in the ground. He, too, had left his mansion, and come to greet the morn. A troop of quail marched along, headed by their chief. Who does not love the quail? She is associated with early childhood and household memories. Her voice rings through the past. We heard it sounding over our better years. What a rich brown suit she wears, cut round with Quaker simplicity! what taste and neatness about it! It was she that long ago went forth with the reapers, and piped for them her sunrise psalm, "_More wet! More wet!_" and she will stay here with us during the winter, and traverse, with her caravan, all day, the desert wastes of snow. Venison says he "don't never kill a quail--it ain't right--but he don't know why."
The partridges, all around, commenced rolling their drums, and every little while, one would whirr past our heads, and die away in the distance. The whole wood-pecker family began _their_ labor. He who wears a red velvet cap, silk shawl, and white under-clothes, was boring away in a rotten tree, to find his breakfast; and he kept hitching around, and hammering, without regarding or caring for our presence. The rabbit, with ears erect, sat drawn up in a heap, quivering with fear, as he gazed upon us.
At last we reached the bank of the river, and Venison said, "We had better sit down, and take our reck'ning." Here was one of the most beautiful pictures of still life ever painted by Nature. The river wound away like a silver serpent, until it was lost in a bank of Indian summer haze, and it gurgled and dashed through the aisles of the forest, like a dream through the silent realms of sleep. It lay, half sunshine, half shadow, and the shadow was slowly creeping up a tall cliff on the opposite shore, as the day advanced, counting, as it were, the moments as they passed. Afar down it, I was amused as I watched a flock of wild geese. They were about a hundred in number, sleeping upon the water, in a glassy cove, their heads neatly tucked under their wings. An old gander, who had been appointed sentinel, to keep watch and guard, was doing the best he could to perform his duty. He stood upon one leg, and he grew so drowsy, several times, that he nearly toppled over, to his great consternation, and the danger of his charge. But rousing up, and taking two or three pompous strides, and stretching his neck to its utmost, with a very wise look, he satisfied himself that all was right, and that he was not so bad a sentinel, after all.
