But as we leaned back in our easy-chairs—spring seats of brake, backed with a bole of red pine-bark—we gazed upward overhead through the gaps in the boughs5, and saw our winged house-fellows, the black-and-white martins, sweeping6 round in long curves after flies in the sunshine. It was immensely picturesque7 for the martins and ourselves; how the flies regard the question I forbear to inquire at the present juncture8. We had lamb chops for lunch; let him that is without sin amongst us—for example, the editor of the Vegetarian9 Times—cast the first stone at the house-martins. For myself, I am too conscious of carnivorous and other sinful tastes to cast stones at anybody. We are all human, say I, or at any rate vertebrate; let us agree to take things with vertebrate toleration.
The house-martins abide10 under the same roof with ourselves; literally11 under the same roof, for their tiny mud nests cling close beneath the eaves of our two spare bedrooms, familiarly known as the Maiden’s Bower12 and the Prophet’s Chamber—the last because it is most often inhabited by our friend the curate, and furnished, after the scriptural precedent13, with “a bed, and a table, and a stool, and a candlestick”—“Every luxury that wealth can afford,” said the Shunammite lady. “Under our roof,” we say, when we speak of it; but the house-martins think otherwise. “Goodness gracious,” I heard one of them twitter amazed to his wife the day we moved in for the first time to our newly-built cottage, “how terribly inconvenient14! Here are some of those great nasty creatures, that walk so awkwardly erect15, come to live in our house without so much as asking us. How they’ll frighten the children!” For to tell you the truth, they were here before us. They came while the builders were still occupied in giving those “finishing touches” which are never finished; and they regarded our arrival as an unwarrantable intrusion. I could tell it from the aggrieved16 tone in which they chirped17 and chattered18: “Gross infringement19 of the liberty of the subject;” “In England, every martin’s nest is called his castle;” “Was it for this our fathers fought and bled at Agincourt against the intrusive20 sparrows?”—and so forth21 ad infinitum. But after a day or two, they cooled down and established a modus vivendi, the terms of the concordat22 being that we mutually agreed to live and let live, they under the eaves, and we in the interior. Since then, this arrangement has been so honourably24 carried out on both sides by the high contracting parties, that the martins allow us to stand close under them on the garden terrace, and watch while they bring flies in their mouths to their callow young, which poke25 out their gaping26 mouths at the nest door to receive them. They know us individually, and return with punctuality and despatch27 to their accustomed home each summer. But when strangers stand by, I notice that, though the parent birds dart28 back to the nest with a mouthful of flies, they do not dare to enter it or to feed their young; they turn hurriedly on the wing, three inches from the door, with a disappointed twitter, a sharp cheep of disgust, and won’t return to their crying chicks, which strain their wide mouths and crane their necks to be fed, till the foreign element has been eliminated from the party.
For myself, I will admit, I just love the house-martins. They may be given to eating flies; but what of that? The skylark himself—Shelley’s skylark, Meredith’s skylark—affects a diet of worms, and nobody thinks one penny the worse of him. Even Juliet, I don’t doubt, ate lamb chops like the rest of us. Indeed, it happened to me a few mornings since, during some very hot weather, to be positively29 grateful for these insectivorous tastes on the part of our feathered fellow-citizens. We were sitting on the verandah, much tried by a plague of flies; it was clear that “the blood of an Englishman” attracted whole swarms30 of midges and other unwelcome visitors. As soon as the house-martins became aware of this fact, they drew nearer and nearer to us in their long curves of flight, swooping31 down upon the insects attracted by our presence before they had time to arrive at the verandah. We sat quite still, taking no notice of the friendly birds’ man?uvres; till after a while they mustered32 up courage to come close to our faces, flying so low and approaching us so boldly, that we might almost have put out our hands and caught them. I am aware, of course, that the martins merely regarded us from the selfish point of view, as fine bait for midges; while we in return were glad to accept their services as vicarious flycatchers. But on what else are most human societies founded save such mutual23 advantage? And do we not often feel real friendship for those who serve us for hire well and faithfully? In the midst of so much general distrust of man, I accept with gratitude34 the confidence of the house-martins.
All members of the British swallow-kind are amply represented in and about our three acres. The common swallows breed under the thatched eaves of the ruined shed in the Frying Pan, and hawk35 all day over the shallow trout-stream that bickers36 down its middle. You can tell them on the wing by their very forked tail. It is, I think, in part a distinguishing mark by which they recognize their own kind, and discriminate37 it from the martins; for the outer-tail feathers are particularly long and noticeable in the male birds, whence I take them to be of the nature of attractive ornaments38. At the beginning of the breeding season, too, the males assume a beautiful pinky blush on the lighter39 parts of the plumage, which may specially40 be observed as they turn flashing for a moment in bright April sunshine. The sand-martins, again, the engineers of their race, have excavated41 their long tunnelled nests in the crumbling42 yellow cliff that flanks the cutting on the high road opposite; I love to see them fly in with unerring aim at the narrow mouth as they return all agog43 from their a?rial hunting expeditions on cool summer evenings. They are the smallest and dingiest44 of our swallows; they have no sheeny blue-black plumage like their handsome cousins, but are pale brown above, and dirty white below. The house-martin, last of all, can be recognized at once upon the wing by his conspicuous45 belt of pure white plumage, almost dazzling in its brilliancy, which stretches in a band across the lower half of his back; as he pirouettes on the wing, this badge of his kind gleams for a moment against the sky, and then fades as if by magic. His shorter tail scarcely shows forked at a distance, but when you watch him at close quarters, it is delightful46 to observe how he broadens or narrows it as he flies, to steady and steer47 himself. In order fully33 to appreciate this point, however, you must have the quick keen eye of the born observer. As for the pure black swifts—those canonical48 birds that haunt the village steeple—they are not swallows at all, but dark and long-winged northern representatives of the humming-birds and trogons. All these alike are summer migrants in England, for they can but come to us when insects on the wing are cheap and plentiful49.
点击收听单词发音
1 spacious | |
adj.广阔的,宽敞的 | |
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2 fretted | |
焦躁的,附有弦马的,腐蚀的 | |
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3 intervals | |
n.[军事]间隔( interval的名词复数 );间隔时间;[数学]区间;(戏剧、电影或音乐会的)幕间休息 | |
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4 dome | |
n.圆屋顶,拱顶 | |
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5 boughs | |
大树枝( bough的名词复数 ) | |
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6 sweeping | |
adj.范围广大的,一扫无遗的 | |
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7 picturesque | |
adj.美丽如画的,(语言)生动的,绘声绘色的 | |
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8 juncture | |
n.时刻,关键时刻,紧要关头 | |
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9 vegetarian | |
n.素食者;adj.素食的 | |
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10 abide | |
vi.遵守;坚持;vt.忍受 | |
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11 literally | |
adv.照字面意义,逐字地;确实 | |
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12 bower | |
n.凉亭,树荫下凉快之处;闺房;v.荫蔽 | |
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13 precedent | |
n.先例,前例;惯例;adj.在前的,在先的 | |
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14 inconvenient | |
adj.不方便的,令人感到麻烦的 | |
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15 erect | |
n./v.树立,建立,使竖立;adj.直立的,垂直的 | |
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16 aggrieved | |
adj.愤愤不平的,受委屈的;悲痛的;(在合法权利方面)受侵害的v.令委屈,令苦恼,侵害( aggrieve的过去式);令委屈,令苦恼,侵害( aggrieve的过去式和过去分词) | |
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17 chirped | |
鸟叫,虫鸣( chirp的过去式 ) | |
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18 chattered | |
(人)喋喋不休( chatter的过去式 ); 唠叨; (牙齿)打战; (机器)震颤 | |
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19 infringement | |
n.违反;侵权 | |
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20 intrusive | |
adj.打搅的;侵扰的 | |
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21 forth | |
adv.向前;向外,往外 | |
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22 concordat | |
n.协定;宗派间的协约 | |
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23 mutual | |
adj.相互的,彼此的;共同的,共有的 | |
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24 honourably | |
adv.可尊敬地,光荣地,体面地 | |
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25 poke | |
n.刺,戳,袋;vt.拨开,刺,戳;vi.戳,刺,捅,搜索,伸出,行动散慢 | |
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26 gaping | |
adj.口的;张口的;敞口的;多洞穴的v.目瞪口呆地凝视( gape的现在分词 );张开,张大 | |
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27 despatch | |
n./v.(dispatch)派遣;发送;n.急件;新闻报道 | |
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28 dart | |
v.猛冲,投掷;n.飞镖,猛冲 | |
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29 positively | |
adv.明确地,断然,坚决地;实在,确实 | |
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30 swarms | |
蜂群,一大群( swarm的名词复数 ) | |
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31 swooping | |
俯冲,猛冲( swoop的现在分词 ) | |
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32 mustered | |
v.集合,召集,集结(尤指部队)( muster的过去式和过去分词 );(自他人处)搜集某事物;聚集;激发 | |
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33 fully | |
adv.完全地,全部地,彻底地;充分地 | |
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34 gratitude | |
adj.感激,感谢 | |
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35 hawk | |
n.鹰,骗子;鹰派成员 | |
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36 bickers | |
v.争吵( bicker的第三人称单数 );口角;(水等)作潺潺声;闪烁 | |
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37 discriminate | |
v.区别,辨别,区分;有区别地对待 | |
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38 ornaments | |
n.装饰( ornament的名词复数 );点缀;装饰品;首饰v.装饰,点缀,美化( ornament的第三人称单数 ) | |
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39 lighter | |
n.打火机,点火器;驳船;v.用驳船运送;light的比较级 | |
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40 specially | |
adv.特定地;特殊地;明确地 | |
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41 excavated | |
v.挖掘( excavate的过去式和过去分词 );开凿;挖出;发掘 | |
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42 crumbling | |
adj.摇摇欲坠的 | |
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43 agog | |
adj.兴奋的,有强烈兴趣的; adv.渴望地 | |
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44 dingiest | |
adj.暗淡的,乏味的( dingy的最高级 );肮脏的 | |
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45 conspicuous | |
adj.明眼的,惹人注目的;炫耀的,摆阔气的 | |
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46 delightful | |
adj.令人高兴的,使人快乐的 | |
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47 steer | |
vt.驾驶,为…操舵;引导;vi.驾驶 | |
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48 canonical | |
n.权威的;典型的 | |
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49 plentiful | |
adj.富裕的,丰富的 | |
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