532 LAND BIRDS 
nest with food averaged ten minutes apart. The longest 
period of fasting was twenty-three minutes, and the short- 
est one and one-half minutes. Usually one can tell what 
food a nestling has swallowed by looking closely at its 
distended crop, as the contents are visible through the 
nearly transparent skin. But 
these young Tanagers were 
twenty feet from the ground in 
a slender fir, and I could not 
examine them; consequently I 
could judge of the menu 
=< only by the foraging of the 
adult, and by what I saw 
) sticking out of his bill. 
When he darted out into 
the air and back again in fly- 
catcher fashion, I knew he was 
after a small insect. When he 
came from the bushes with a 
bunch on either side of his beak, 
I was sure he had picked up a 
caterpillar ; when wings of gauzy 
607. LOUISIANA TANAGER. 
“A dragonfly had been cap. veXture projected on one side of 
Pe ir aa eaen the mandibles and a long black 
body on the other, I made a Yankee guess that a dragon- 
fly had been captured for breakfast. 
As soon as the nestlings were able to fly they came 
down to the cover of the lower brush and fed in com- 
pany with their parents. We knew this by the anxiety 
of the adults and by their efforts to lead us away from 
