its burden of white blossoms, flanked the line of roses. In the syringa bush a 

 catbird was singing, and strangely enough, he forgot to throw into the midst 

 of his melody the harsh note that so often mars his performance. I stood for 

 a minute enjoying the bloom of the roses and the song of the bird. The singer 

 left the discordant element out of its song, to be sure, but discord came in the 

 shape of an English sparrow, who viciously attacked the catbird who had been 

 presumptions enough to lift its voice in a British sparrow's presence. The Amer- 

 ican fought faithfully, but it was no match for the heavy-beaked alien. I drove 

 the sparrow away. A few minutes afterward I found its big bulky home in a 

 cherry tree. I tore the nest down and destroyed the eggs. Cruel? Not a bit of 

 it. Cruel to one kind of bird, perhaps, but kindness to an hundred others. Go 

 thou and do likewise. 



At the end of a little lane that leads pastureward from the house is an Osage 

 orange, half tree and half shrub. It is the sole surviving corner-piece of two 

 hedges of bygone days. In this growth was a nest of the loggerhead shrike. 

 This bird spends its winters in the South, but comes to this latitude to breed, 

 replacing here the great northern shrike which comes from the far North in the 

 winter and scurries back Arcticward at the first suggestion of spring. The logger- 

 head lives on small birds, small snakes, and large insects. Being a predatory 

 creature, it supposedly should be possessed of some courage, and yet here was 

 a loggerhead shrike that had five dependent young ones in its nest, and still did 

 not dare to come within a field's width of its home while trespassing man was 

 about. A robin or a jay would have been at the post of danger, and if it could 

 have done nothing else, would have roundly berated the intruder. The logger- 

 head sat on the far-away fence-post and was apparently perfectly unconcerned 

 while effort was made to peek into its nest. Some friends who had joined me 

 undertook to take a snap-shot of the shrike's home and young. The nest was so 

 well fortified with twigs and branches, each of which carried a score of thorns, 

 that the photographing process was beset with difficulties. To the right of the 

 nest, pierced through the neck and hanging from a thorn, was the half-eaten 

 body of a small snake, placed there by the shrike perhaps to provide the larder 

 against any future scarcity of living game. As soon as we had left the vicinity 

 of the nest the shrike went back to its young and doubtless gave them each a bit 

 of snake steak to make them forget their fright. 



The Worth marsh, which stretches away for acres from the foot of the 

 orchard, is a fruitful field for the study of bird-life. When we had opened the 

 old-fashioned gate at the lane's end, we could see a glistening patch of clear 

 water far beyond the rushes' tops. The dark forms of birds were wheeling about 

 above its surface and their cries were borne down to us by the breeze. We 

 skirted the marsh and approached the open water, and there through our glasses 

 had a perfect view of the darting birds. They were dark, almost black, but 

 there was a gloss to their feathers which the sun's rays let us see from time to 

 time as the birds kept up their changeful flight. They were black terns that 



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