io8 Birds of Lakeside and Prairie 



the while that he sat upon the nest he sang sweetly the war- 

 bling song that gives him his name. Somewhere in this habit 

 of the vireo there is hidden a lesson for humankind. Not 

 much searching is needed to find it. 



The Kankakee flows along not more than a hundred yards 

 from our farm-house headquarters. We started for the river 

 bank, but found bird-life so abundant that we made little 

 more than half the journey before the breakfast bell sum- 

 moned us. The field sparrow, the little fellow with the red 

 bill and the chestnut crown, sang his sweet note from the fence 

 post and did not appear at all discouraged because his brother 

 song sparrow was giving a much better entertainment within 

 a rod. From a little patch of bushes in the damp pasture 

 came the call, "Witchety-witchety-witchety," and in a 

 moment a Maryland yellow-throat showed his black-masked 

 face to us through the tender green of the foliage. The yel- 

 low-throat is a beauty, but one cannot say as much for his 

 voice. There were some chewinks, perhaps better known as 

 towhees, in the pasture, and one of them kindly sang for us. 

 The towhees's song, it has always seemed to me, has just 

 about volume enough for a bird of half its size. But then 

 we mustn't expect too much; the towhee wears a beautiful 

 suit of black, terra-cotta, and white, and he knows how to 

 show it to advantage. He charms our color sense, and we 

 forgive him readily for not being a nightingale. 



The cow blackbird is despised above all feathered kind. 

 It is a parasite, building no nest of its own, but depositing its 

 eggs in the homes of smaller birds. The warblers are gener- 

 ally the ones imposed upon. They often seem unable to 

 detect the deception, and hatch the egg and rear the cow-bird 

 to a sacrifice of their own young. This habit is too well 



