The Friendly Pipit

Manawatu Times, Volume 64, Issue 308, 30 December 1939, Page 10

The Friendly Pipit

MR. H. G-UTHRIE-SMITH ’ S TRIBUTE Probably nobody in New Zealand would be more grieved than Mr. H. Guthrie-Smith, of Tutira, by the news that Australian magpies harry the native lark, the friendly pipit. In “Birds of the Wood, Water and Waste,” Mr. H. Guthrie-Smith pays pleasant tribute to the pipit. “He will do his share in garden work,” the author writes, “keeping just out of hoe and rake reach and picking up with short, deft runs the white, soft, sleepy, disinterested larvae of the green beetle. Often and often when gardening have I had one or two of these cheerful little companions, quite friendly but never over bold and always wearing that veil of shyness so peculiarly their own. Never would the ground lark wear the abstracted, distrait look of an English robin, never would he be guilty of such discourtesy as to sit, as does the redbreast, like a stone, until he darts on his worm, showing that the worm and not your companionship is his real object. My little brown friend would never do that ; # each of us gives a happiest interpretation of the other’s presence. Though incidentally the turnedover soil may be used later on for other purposes, I am there now, the pipit persuades himself, to provide him those soft-shelled grubs, as white and pathetically helpless as babies. Seeing me ldhely at my work, I know he wishes me to believe that he has arrived wita his cheerful chirp and ceaseless runs and flutterings to charm the solitude, make the sun brighter and the sky more blue. Mutual courtesy is always observed, on my part by no too quick motion or sudden throwing down of tools; on his, an exit lingering and reluctant, for his departure, too, is like him, little runs and pauses that carry him further and further, as if breaking the sorrow to me, and when at last he is no longer there T realise the old French proverb and know that of the two parties in our affection it is I who have given my heart whilst the bird only consents to be loved. He is gone, and part of the morning brightness with him!”