226 GRAY LADY AND THE BIRDS 
‘The Killdeer is an insect eater, taking grasshoppers, 
crickets, beetles, boll weevils, and the dreaded Rocky 
Mountain locust.’ If this is not enough, add that the Kind 
Hearts wish to protect all these gentle little birds, that are 
out of place on the list of food-birds, and we all know that 
when a kind heart wishes to do a thing, it usually finds 
the way!” 
“Somebody told Dad at the last Farmers’ Institute 
that the Reed birds, that the big boys go gunning for down 
in the marsh meadows along in August, are changed Bobo- 
links,” said Tommy, “and that we mustn’t shoot them any 
more, because Bobolinks are singing-birds, and I just 
guess they are. My! can’t they sing, and fly right up at 
the same time, as if going so fast shook the song out of 
them, and they couldn’t help it!” 
Gray Lady laughed at Tommy’s description, which 
was certainly very true, and expressed in vigorous boy 
language. 
“Yes, Tommy, the black-white-and-buff Bobolink of 
May, after the midsummer moult, becomes a dull, brown- 
striped bird like his wife, and, shedding his lovely voice 
and glowing feathers together, he keeps only a call note. 
In this masquerade he leads a double, and somewhat 
vagabond, life, travelling by slow degrees toward his winter 
home and then back again in the spring, all the while 
eating many things which the owners do not wish him to 
have, one being rice, —rice in the ear and the sprouting 
rice in spring. 
“Let others do as they must, but we, who have no rice 
to be hurt, insist that this bit of ardent, flying melody 
shall receive the treatment that his music deserves, and 
