50 BIRDS OF THE WEST 



the peculiar marking upon the eggs. They look as though a three- 

 year-old baby had been given the little pale blue eggs and a fine 

 brush full of black paint and told to decorate them. Of course 

 no two are alike. If you don't find a cowbird's egg in every 

 nest it will be a wonder for the redwing is so amiable that she 

 never objects. 



If you could see the tons of bugs and worms that they eat 

 in a season, you would never kill one of them. Why, chinch- 

 bug salad and cut-worm pudding are always on their menu in 

 season. 



For some reason every farmer wants his "four and twenty 

 blackbirds baked into a pie" or worse than that, wants to see 

 how many of them he can kill at one shot, for they often are 

 in very large flocks as they make the valleys ring with their 

 choruses. If you never heard a blackbird chorus in which the 

 redwings, the yellow-heads, the rustys and the grackles join, you 

 have missed the prettiest melody of bird music. 



Mr. Farmer, please stop shooting them. Don't you remem- 

 ber how, while you were wearily trudging behind your plow, 

 they followed in your furrow and ate the bugs and the grubs 

 and the worms, keeping you company and cheering you with 

 their songs? Is corn so dear that you will not give them a very 

 little share of what they earn? 



COWBIRD. 



Did you ever see a lot of small birds hanging around where 

 the cows are, now sitting on their backs, now if the sun is hot, 

 walking in the cow's shadow eating flies and bugs that are bother- 

 ing them? They were cow birds. 



There are sacred birds of Egypt that walk into the very 

 throats of the crocodiles and eat the bloodsuckers, and the 

 crocodiles never harm them. Doubtless the cows would never 

 harm their faithful little friends the cow birds, even if they 

 could, for that would surely dissolve the partnership. The cow 

 says to the bird "I will let you use me as a perch, I will let you 

 keep cool in my shadow, I will decoy bugs for you and scare 

 hoppers out of the grass with my nose ; all that I want you to do 

 is to eat 'skeeters'." "All right" says the cow bird in an under- 

 tone — and that is about all that he ever says. 



