24 Birds of Lakeside and Prairie 



ears. To me they paid no attention, but directed their wrath 

 at the poor four-footed creature, who could not have injured 

 them or their young had he tried. Jack did not like the 

 treatment he received. It seemed to cow him. Here was 

 an enemy with which he could not combat on anything like 

 equal terms. Finally he put his tail between his legs, jumped 

 the fence again, and slunk down the road, the swallows dart- 

 ing down on him again and again during his retreat. They 

 finally left him, and Jack took to his haunches some fifty 

 yards away and awaited my return. I made several journeys 

 with Jack along that same country road before the season 

 waned, but never again could I get him close to the scene of 

 the swallows' attack. 



It was in a meadow near the weather-beaten barns that a 

 bird-loving friend of mine found an almost pure white bobo- 

 link, happily mated and as full of joyous song as though 

 Nature had not mixed her colors in painting him. Robert 

 was white, barring a few black streaks on his breast. I made 

 his acquaintance a little later in the season, and found that 

 he and his wife had a field all to themselves. Across the 

 road there were scores of bobolinks, but it was evident that 

 they had made an outcast of their brother because of his pecu- 

 liar plumage. It has been said that albino birds are not able 

 to secure mates. If that be the rule, this bobolink's case was 

 an exception, for he had a wife who seemed to find nothing 

 wrong with the attire of her lord. I have often wished that 

 I could have seen the albino at the period when the bobolinks 

 doff their summer garb and don the sober clothing of the fall. 

 I wondered if after the molting Bob's new crop of feathers 

 might not have been normal. The speculation ran still 

 further, and I wondered if the coming of the next spring's 



