254 SOME COMMON LAND-BIRDS. 



of a scarlet tanager feeding young chipping sparrows ; of a chest- 

 nut-sided warbler caring for some young redstarts that were not 

 orphans, and a wren-tit feeding a young lazuli bunting. We 

 may any day expect to happen upon an incident of this kind, or 

 to find where some bird has laid in another's nest, as the quails 

 often do and as the roseate and Wilson's terns have been re- 

 ported to do. 



Who would expect a woodpecker to turn cannibal and eat 

 little birds ? Or to rob birds' nests of their eggs and young ? 

 We have no more staid and respected birds than these wood- 

 peckers, who are not commonly regarded as "eaters of little 

 children " even by jealous bird mammas ; but now and 

 then some lunatic or hopelessly degenerate woodpecker will 

 commit a ghastly crime. The crow-blackbirds are not gener- 

 ally supposed to be above temptations of green corn, but they 

 were not till recently accused of playing the thug to little 

 birds and of poaching live fish from private ponds. But both 

 these serious charges have been fully proved against them in 

 several instances and the different observers agree that in such 

 cases the blackbirds pick out and eat the brains of their prey. 

 The honest eaves-swallow has been seen to steal her neighbor's 

 mud and to build it into her own nest ; and I have seen the 

 blue-backed swallow which is supposed invarial^ly to eat 

 nothing but little flies, taken by coursing after them, flying 

 round by the dozen and alighting on a cherry tree to pick 

 off the caterpillars that had nearly stripped it of its leaves. It 

 was a strange thing, too, for a Baltimore oriole to eat green 

 poplar leaves, as it was observed to do year after year. 



There is always a chance of seeing something new and in- 

 credible, though the chance comes to him who knows best what 

 is usual and even more than credible — tiresomely familiar. 

 And over and above the pleasure that comes from w^atching 



