94 CEOW BLACKBIRD 



appear on the brown grass and in the bare 

 trees, making such a merry clatter and looking 

 so big and positive that all uncertainty seems 

 over, and we can no longer doubt that summer is 

 on the way. Our spirits rise as we w^atch them 

 walk about, gurgling and squeaking jovially to 

 each other, and we welcome them as w^e do the 

 Jack-in-the-pulpit and the Wake-robin, though 

 later in the spring our thoughts may be filled by 

 rarer, more delicate flowers and more tuneful 

 birds. 



How full of business the birds appear as they 

 walk over the lawns and parks regardless of ob- 

 servers who stop to admire their glossy, irides- 

 cent coats, and who smile as they fly up on a 

 branch with a squawk to scrape their bills and 

 shake their tails ! When they fly, lookers-on are 

 still more interested, for they spread their long 

 tails and turn them into rudders with which to 

 steer their course. When the Crow Blackbirds go 

 to nesting, they still keep in colonies. They build 

 bulky nests of mud and grasses, and lay bluish 

 eggs singularly scrawled. As their name sug- 

 gests they have many mannerisms of the Crows, 

 with whom, like other birds who get most of 

 their food on the ground, they share the habit of 

 sedately walking instead of hopping as tree-feed- 

 ing birds do when they descend to earthly matters. 

 It would indeed seem strange and unseemly for a 

 dignified Grouse or Dove to hop, but on the other 



