AT MEAL-TIME. 41 
Birds spend nearly all their time in hunting for 
something to eat. Life seems to be one long picnic 
for them. They digest rapidly. Their food is found 
and picked up in very small quantities, excepting the 
food of the gourmands like the buzzards. These birds 
are certainly not very tidy or nice about their meals. 
They eat as much as they possibly can, and then sit 
about on the low fences, or even on the ground, too 
full and heavy to fly away. 
Birds have sharp ears and can hear bugs and worms 
long before they can be seen. The woodpecker listens 
for the grubs with his ear close to the bark of the trees. 
But woodpeckers are not always after grubs when you 
see them running up and down a tree trunk and peck- 
ing holes in the bark. They like the inner skin of the 
bark for food, and the sap-suckers drink the sap of the 
tree. 
Watch the robin or the mocking-bird on the lawn. 
You have been sprinkling that lawn for two weeks in 
midsummer, just to make the grass nice and green. 
Perhaps you did not think that you were making it 
easy for the birds to get something to eat in a dry time. 
But you see that your sprinkling or watering has made 
the turf mellow and soft, so that the worms can crawl 
up to the surface more easily than if it were dry. And 
the birds are making the most of your kindness, as you 
see. 
See how that little bird cants his head and listens. 
We imagine him holding up his hand and saying, 
