136 



What fixed this somewhat trival occurrence, in my mind, was that on. 

 the afternoon of the same day, in another swamp at least three miles 

 from the first one, the very same thing was repeated by another Water 

 Thrush, in almost exactly the same way. At another time one of a lit- 

 tle knot of Meadowlarks I was scrutinizing with the glass, thought he 

 would like to see what 1 looked like behind, so, making a long detour, 

 he flew up as near as he dared behind me to have a look. By turning 

 my head I followed his flight, and when he alighted and saw that I was 

 still watching him, he hurried back by the way he came in a great state 

 of excitement, and reported to his comrades that I could look both ways 

 at once with my big goggle eyes. Of course they knewbetter and laugh- 

 ed at him. 



Of all the birds, one would think the big blustering bully known 

 as the Crow Blackbird, the least likely to imitate the acrobatic feats of 

 human beings. And yet I was told by a young man, whose veracity up 

 to that time I had had no reason to doubt, that he had a short time before 

 witnessed the spectacle of several of these birds turning somersets on the 

 grass. He further went on to say that one of them was as far superior to 

 the others in acrobatic proficiency as the bespangled king of the circus 

 arena is to the common tumblers in the pink tights. These less favored 

 birds, lie averred, made a dismal failure of it, or as he put it li fell all 

 over themselves," whenever they tried to follow the leader in his grace- 

 ful evolutions. 1 gravely listened to this touching narrative giving no 

 hint of my mental resolve to enquire the price of yarn at the first 

 opportunity, a resolve I never carried out, for just six days later I sur- 

 prised two of these Blackbirds sitting on a pasture fence, acting in the 

 double capacity of spectators and sentinels, at a similar acrobatic per- 

 formance given by half a dozen of their cousins, the Cowbirds. They 

 were not just exactly turning somersets, but their actions were suffi- 

 ciently unbirdlike, and bore a strong enough resemblance to the tumb- 

 ling of the circus ring, to make me very glad I had expressed no open 

 doubt of my informant's truthfulness, and when I afterwards saw two 

 Robins playing hide and seek over the shelving edge of a railway cut- 

 ting, with all the dainty tip-toeing to the edge of the bank, the spring- 

 ing out from the hiding place, the screams, and the laughter, that would 

 have characterized the game had it been played by children, I was still 



