touch with the thoughts di birds. I would give much to know just what it was 

 tliat i)romptecl a red-headed woodpecker to a certain line of conduct on one occa- 

 sion. I concluded he was moved by a spirit of pure mischief and nothing else, but 

 possibly he had some graver reason in his head. I saw a brilliant Baltimore 

 oriole sunning himself on a limb and holding in his bill a piece of newspaper as 

 large as himself. I never knew on oriole to use newspaper for nesting material, 

 and although it was homesteading time I did not think that the bird seriously 

 contemplated playing the vireo and using wall paper in his residence. There was 

 a red-headed woodpecker on the trunk of the tree. He seemed to take something 

 more than passing interest in the oriole and his bit of paper. Perhaps his thought 

 was, "There's a foolish bird laboring with something that it has no possible use 

 for." Whatever the thought, the red-head presently darted out, snatched the bit 

 of paper from the oriole, and flew far across the field with it to another tree. 

 There he dropped the paper to the ground and began a search for grubs in the 

 bark. The woodpecker had no more use for the paper than did the oriole. Per- 

 haps its purloining of the paper was prompted simply by a bad temper. It has 

 often been intimated that infirmities of temper are not infrequentlv the accom- 

 paniments of red heads. 



The Bronzed Grackle [Quiscalus quiscula aeneus). 



By W. Leon Dawson 



Length, 13 inches; lustrous black. 



Range, from Allegheny mountains to Rocky Mountains and north from 

 southern New England to Newfoundland and Great Slave Lake. 



Aesop tells of a crow which, appropriating some cast-ofif feathers of a pea- 

 cock, succeeded in cutting quite a swath among his plain-hued friends, until 

 a clever rival disclosed the sham and brought him into deserved contempt. The 

 crow blackbird has improved upon the trick. Without trying to parade feathers 

 manifestly too big for him, he has borrowed the peacock's sheen, and he struts 

 about, in a manner accommodated to his surroundings, with all the peacock's 

 pride. He is a handsome fellow. See him as in the full sunlight he submits a 

 wing to the critical gaze of his coveted Juliet! Burnished brass, brass over steel, 

 resplendent as a coat of mail ! She approves, although she w^ill not say so. But, 

 lo ! how insolent he is ! She likes that too and snickers softly as he shouts down 

 to you, "Jup, jup. What are you doing here in my orchard?" If one is taken 

 unawares he is apt to stammer out, "Why, why, I thought it was my orchard until 

 you spoke." 



For all he is so vain, no one ever accused the grackle of being graceful. 

 He is capable of bold, vigorous flight, but in the spring he chooses to exhibit the 

 dimensions of his rudder-like tail, and sometimes he lets it swing him around in 

 a small circle as though it were a weight from which he was struggling to get 



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