4^ Birds Every Child Should Know 



comes to visit me at least ten times every day, 

 can scarcely wait for the milk to be poured into 

 the dog's bowl before he has flown to the brim 

 for the first drink. Once, in his eagerness, he 

 alighted on the pitcher in my hand. He has 

 a pretty trick of flying to the sun dial as if he 

 wished to learn the time of day. From this 

 point of vantage, he will sail off suddenly, like a 

 flycatcher, to seize an insect on the wing. He 

 has a keen appetite for so many pests of the 

 garden and orchard — moths, grasshoppers, 

 beetles, caterpillars, spiders, flies and other in- 

 sects — ^that his friendship, you see, is well worth 

 cultivating. Five catbirds, whose diet was care- 

 ftdly watched by scientific men in Washington, 

 ate thirty grasshoppers each for one meal. 



Yet how many people ignorantly abuse the 

 catbird! Because he has the good taste to like 

 strawberries and cherries as well as we do, is he 

 to be condemned on that account? If he kills 

 insects for us every waking hour from April to 

 October, don't you think he is entitled to a 

 little fruit in June? The ox that treadeth out 

 the com is not to be muzzled, so that he cannot 

 have a taste of it, you remember. A good way 

 to protect our strawberry patches and cherry 

 trees from catbirds, mockingbirds, and robins, 

 is to provide fruit that they like much better — 

 the red mulberry. Nothing attracts so many 

 birds to a place. A mulberry tree in the chicken 



