Love the hoopoe bird of childhood...
【Original】Text/Qiu Ye
First of all, let's talk about this hoopoe bird, it is the flower of the bird, the appearance is extremely unique, the head is full of colorful feathers, everyone loves, I like this wild animal, in the more than ten years of getting along with it, people around it are used to calling it "full of food", "smelly full" and "full and full". These common names: also the other side of it, are related to its cry: when she is happy, when she is full, she cries: "Full, full, eat...". It has self-protective properties, and when its safety is threatened, the body emits a peculiar smell . If you don't catch her, pick her nest, steal her eggs, you don't smell it, and you certainly don't know how smelly it is. The so-called distance produces beauty! Everywhere it went, it provoked everyone to stop and stare at it, or chase and watch. They like to fly low together, stay in the fields in early spring to hunt and play, and this image accompanied me through my childhood, and then a man-made disaster struck and the couple bird disappeared from my sight forever.
Being in a foreign land, I often miss my hometown and the happy times of my childhood.
One day brushing TikTok, a bird entered the eye, so familiar and kind, this is not the "pair of birds" that nested in the abandoned smoke hole of my Tulou as a child! Exactly the same, it turns out that this "bird" has a tall, big, scientific name "hoopoe bird", I have asked myself countless times, what is their scientific name??? It has not been known for a long time. I am so excited to meet today, my partner, you are not "smelly and full", "full and full", I rehabilitate you, you are the famous "hoopoe bird": a symbol of peace, happiness, happiness and happiness.
On the morning of early spring, I was often woken up by the chirping of birds, the flocks of sparrows chirping on the branches, the walls noisy, a few magpies spreading the good news in the tall poplar trees, the cuckoo "aunt waiting, aunt, etc." calling, the swallows on the old house screamed through the door, black into a bolt of lightning, and I thought about the hoopoe bird, so I slipped down the earthen kang and ran to the earthen building outside the courtyard to see the pair of elves.
This pair of hoopoe birds have lived in the smoke hole behind my house for more than ten years, and every early spring, their husband and wife fly from thousands of miles to the south to report, and then begin to forage in the fields, they are not afraid of people, they like to peck insects in the trees, and when they are happy, the flower fan above their heads opens, and they raise their long mouths "Full, full, eat...
This couple bird has a brown chestnut color above the head, neck and wings! There are black dots on the top of the head fan, very good-looking, a pair of small round eyes, smart and smart, the mouth is an inch long, the wings are black and white striped feathers, flying is particularly beautiful, I like to quietly watch them a high and a low, one in front and one behind, flying around, bouncing, turning the ground with a pointed mouth, puffing up the neck and chirping, "Full, full, eat..."
Many times I carried a stool to pick up their nests and look for bird eggs, but they were smoked by the black and shiny inside and outside the nest. That day, I dug an earthworm in the wetland and put it on a tile to feed it, with the aim of catching it, touching its beautiful feathers and flower crowns, and amusing it. I held my breath and waited for them to come and eat, a minute, ten minutes, half an hour, finally one flew over, the pincer-like mouth caught the earthworm, saying that it was too late and fast, I pounced to catch it, the guy's eyes were fast, fluttered and flew away, I only smoothed a few feathers, wow, a strong smell of sheep, it was so smelly, I covered my nose and ran, after that, I never thought about scratching them anymore. To make friends with them, it seems that you can only keep your distance and quietly watch them move not far away. Don't look at them shiny and beautiful, they live in a nest: messy: feathers, straw, leaves, rotten bushos and excrement. Without seeing it with your own eyes, you can't believe that such a beautiful and charming appearance has such a bad nest, and what is even more exaggerated is that they will smear feces on young birds. This may be their magic weapon for survival! Birds of prey and humans who want to eat them and hunt them will flee when they smell their peculiar smell. Their nests will of course be intact, so they can safely and boldly hatch the next generation...
The first thing I did when I came home from school was to see the couple birds, what were they doing? When I see them flying safely and freely, I am happy, happy, joyful, and at the same time I will unconsciously follow them, observe everything about them, and make sure that they are safe and sound, and I will not fly far.
Every spring, hoopoes return from the south, and they are just as busy as the people, flying in to make a living and feed the next generation. Time flies, and good times are always blown away by the rain and wind...
One day in the third lunar month of 1978, when I came home from school, when I was a hundred meters away from Zhuangzi, I was frightened and cried by the scene in front of me: a group of people armed with picks, shovels, and iron rods, under the reprimand of the captain, knocked down the second-story earthen building of my house, and all the courtyard walls around it were torn down and shattered, the scene was dusty, the voices were noisy, and the mess, the honest father, holding his head and squatting under the tree in silence, the mother cried and mourned his face in the clearing of the fallen wall. (It is said that the remnants of the old wall have the stamina of the years and can be used as farmhouse fertilizer) At that time, it was a large collective and a large pot of rice. The captain is the earth emperor, think one set is another. My parents are older and honest, the eldest brother and the second brother responded to the national policy, one became a worker, the other went to the army, and the younger brother and nephew were still young. Without the pillar of the sorghum in the house, it became a lamb to be slaughtered in the village team.
I rushed madly to grab their hammers and grab their iron lifts. "Are you bandits? Why do you tear down my building, smash my wall, you roll, roll, roll for me..." A few strong men couldn't help but erect me, no matter how I shouted, they savagely stuffed me into the mansion and tied the door. "You let me go"..."You gang of robbers, bandits, you bully honest people, you must not die well" Woo hoo...
The beautiful hoopoe bird, because the nest was destroyed, never appeared in my home again, never appeared in my sight again, it was the "smelly fullness" that touched my childhood memories, and it was the hoopoe bird that made me infinitely attached to my hometown! I love its beauty, its alert nature, its unswerving habits.
