Weedah the Mocking Bird WEEDAH was playing a great trick on the black fellows who lived near him. He had built himself a number of grass nyunnoos, more than twenty. He made fires before each, to make it look as if some one lived in the nyunnoos. First he would go into one nyunnoo, or […]
Category: Passeriformes
The Merry Meadowlark who lived in the tall reeds
Once there was an old gray pussy, and she went down into the meadow, where she saw a merry lark flying among the tall reeds; and pussy said, “Where are you going, little lark?” And the merry lark answered, “I am going to the king to sing him a song this fine May morning.” And […]
Children that became Swallows, but remained near us
Once upon a time some Eskimo children were playing in the wet clay by the seashore. They were making tiny toy houses of the clay. These houses they fastened high on the face of the cliff. The children chattered and laughed. They ran gaily to and fro in their happy play. The people of the […]
The pessimistic Raven and the wiser Robin
One morning in the early spring a raven was sitting on one of the branches of an old oak. He felt very ugly and cross, and could only say, “Croak! Croak!” Soon a little robin, who was looking for a place to build her nest, came, with a merry song, into the same tree. “Good […]
Barn Swallow folk lore poster
This poster shows a drawing by John Gould. We have added some folk lore stories about this cosmopolitan bird.
The Tree Sparrow and the selffish old woman, a tale of revenge
In a little house in a little old village in Japan lived a little old man and his little old wife. One morning when the old woman slid open the screens which form the sides of the Japanese houses, she saw on the doorstep a poor little sparrow. She took him up gently and fed […]
How the Birds Obtained their Distinctive Markings
An Arawak hunter captures a Vulture, daughter of Anuaninia.” She lays aside her feathers, appears before him as a beautiful girl, becomes his wife, bears him above the clouds, and after much trouble persuades her father and family to receive him. All then goes well until he expresses a wish to visit his aged mother, […]
The Slothful Nightingale and the Industrious Ant
It is related that in a certain garden a Nightingale had built his nest on the bough of a rose-bush. It so happened that a poor little Ant had fixed her dwelling at the root of this same bush, and managed as best she could to store her wretched hut of care with winter provision. […]
The court of Crows
According to Landt, a Danish writer, crows are singularly troublesome in the Feroe Islands, deriving great part of their subsistence from plunder. Not content with picking seed from the field, they dig up the newly planted potatoes, destroy the barley before it is ripe, cut off the cabbage roots, and those of almost every other […]
A Murderer Detected through Ravens
A gentleman who had been robbed by his servant forgave him on condition that he would promise to abandon his bad habits. This promise he so far kept, and conducted himself so steadily as to accumulate enough money to enable him to marry, and to keep an inn on a much frequented road. About twenty […]