BIRDS FOR EVERYBODY 85 
markably trim and sleek, its upper parts of a 
peculiarly warm cinnamon brown, its lower parts 
yellowish, its tail tipped handsomely with yellow, 
its head marked with black and adorned with a 
truly magnificent top-knot; as great a lover of 
cherries as any schoolboy, and one of the first 
birds upon which the youthful taxidermist tries 
his hand. Just now —in early March — the 
waxwings are hereabout in great flocks (I saw 
more than a hundred, surely, three days ago), 
stuffing themselves, literally, with savin berries. 
These large flocks will after a while disappear, 
and some time later, in May, smaller companies 
will arrive from the South and settle with us for 
the summer, helping themselves to our cherries 
in return for the swarms of insects of whose pre- 
sence they have relieved us. If we see them thus 
engaged, we shall do well to remember the Scrip- 
ture text, “ The laborer is worthy of his hire.” 
This enumeration of birds, so strongly marked 
that even a wayfaring man may easily name them, 
might be extended indefinitely. It would be a 
strange Massachusetts boy who did not know the 
ruffed grouse (though he would probably call 
him the partridge) and the Bob White; the king- 
bird, with his black and white plumage, his aerial 
tumblings, and his dashing pursuit of the crow; 
the splendid scarlet tanager, fiery red, with black 
