FRIENDLY PIPIT

Wairarapa Times-Age, 13 January 1940, Page 6

FRIENDLY PIPIT

MR H. GUTHRIE-SMITH'S TRIBUTE.

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 ’.each, and picking up with short, deft runs, the white, soft, sleepy disinterred 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 overbold, and always wearing that veil of shyness so ijeculiarly 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 thereby 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 turned-over soil maybe used later 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 lonely at my work, I know he wishes me to believe that he has arrived with 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 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 I 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!"