Everv bird of them must
have been born without a palate, it seemed to me. White-eyed chewinks
were at home in the dense palmetto scrub, whence they announced
themselves unmistakably by sharp whistles. Now and then one of them
mounted a leaf, and allowed me to see his pale yellow iris. Except for
this mark, recognizable almost as far as the bird could be distinguished
at all, he looked exactly like our common New England towhee. Somewhere
behind me was a kingfisher's rattle, and from a savanna in the same
direction came the songs of meadow larks; familiar, but with something
unfamiliar about them at the same time, unless my ears deceived me.
More interesting than any of the birds yet named, because more strictly
characteristic of the place, as well as more strictly new to me, were
the brown-headed nuthatches. I was on the watch for them: they were one
of the three novelties which I knew were to be found in the pine lands,
and nowhere else,--the other two being the red-cockaded woodpecker and
the pine-wood sparrow; and being thus on the lookout, I did not expect
to be taken by surprise, if such a paradox (it is nothing worse) maybe
allowed to pass. But when I heard them twittering in the distance, as I
did almost immediately, I had no suspicion of what they were. The voice
had nothing of that nasal quality, that Yankee twang, as some people
would call it, which I had always associated with the nuthatch family.
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