midday
Men did , indeed , bring the pestilent sparrows which swarm about their habitations here , and beat away the gentler and lovelier birds with a ferocity unknown in the human occupation of the islands . Still , the sparrows have by no means conquered , and in the wilder places the catbird makes common cause with the bluebird and the redbird , and holds its own against them . The little ground-doves mimic in miniature the form and markings and the gait and mild behavior of our turtle-doves , but perhaps not their melancholy cooing . Nature has nowhere anything prettier than these exquisite creatures , unless it be the long-tailed white gulls which sail over the emerald shallows of the landlocked seas , and take the green upon their translucent bodies as they trail their meteoric splendor against the midday sky . Full twenty-four inches they measure from the beak to the tip of the single pen that protracts them a foot beyond their real bulk ; but it is said their tempers are shorter than they , and they attack fiercely anything they suspect of too intimate a curiosity concerning their nests . They are probably the only short-tempered things in the Summer Islands , where time is so long that if you lose your patience you easily find it again . Sweetness , if not light , seems to be the prevailing human quality , and a good share of it belongs to such of the natives as are in no wise light .