54 A-BIRDING ON A BRONCO. 



and with jaunty twists and turns hopped about on 

 the dead limbs, giving hurried jabs at the cob- 

 webs she was gathering. Once she rubbed her 

 little cheek against a twig as if a thread of the 

 cobweb had gotten in her eye. She dashed in 

 among the dead leaves after something, but flew 

 back with a start as if she had seen a ghost. She 

 was not to be daunted, however, and after whip- 

 ping her tail and peering in for a moment, hopped 

 bravely down again. Sometimes, when collecting 

 cobweb, the gnat would whip its tail and snap 

 its bill snip, snip, snip, as if cutting the web with 

 a pair of scissors. 



I was amused one day by seeing a gnat fly down 

 from the oak to the brush with what looked like a 

 long brown caterpillar. The worm dangling from 

 the tip of his beak was almost as large as the 

 bird, and the little fellow had to crook his tail to 

 keep from being overbalanced and going on his 

 bill to the ground. 



As the nest went up, the leaves hid it ; but I 

 could still see the small wings and tails flip up 

 in the air over the edge of the cup and jerk about 

 as the bird moulded. I watched the workers so 

 long that I felt quite competent to build a nest 

 myself, till happening to remember that it re- 

 quired gnatcatcher tools. 



Ornithologists are discouraging people to wait 

 for, and Mountain Billy got so restless under the 

 gnat tree that he had to invent a new fly-brush 



