AT MEAL-TIME. 43 
when we called, “Come, Chickie,” and she would fly 
close to us with eager eyes, not at all afraid. 
Every night at sundown, which is the bird’s supper- 
time, we went to the summer-house and turned over 
the empty flower-pots. Under these pots little black 
bugs were hiding, but more especially the saw-bugs, 
soft, gray, crawling things. The mocking-bird would 
follow us as fast as she could, picking up the bugs for 
her young. When she had a mouth full of the wrig- 
gling insects, she would go and feed them to her babies 
and come back again to the moist places under the pots, 
until every bug was captured. 
Once there were more bugs under one pot than she 
could possibly carry at one time, and she was in great 
trouble to know what to do about it. She swallowed 
as many as she wanted herself, and then she began 
cramming her mouth full for the babies. The bugs 
looked so tempting, and there were so many, she did 
not like to lose any of them, and so she kept on picking 
them up. After her mouth was as full as it could hold, 
the bugs kept falling out at the sides of her bill, and she 
would pick them up again over and over without know- 
ing it, until we scared her away by our laughing. 
Some birds, as we have said, such as the owls, take 
their food whole. Of course, bones, hair, and feathers 
cannot be digested, so after a time they are thrown up 
in the shape of little balls, called “castings,” and by 
examining them we can find out exactly what the bird 
has been eating. 
