BIRDS AND BRIGHT LEAVES 77 



inclined to believe that the thing is no more than 

 an innocent, though one-sided, game of tag. All 

 young creatures must have something to play 

 with, somebody to make game of. So it is with 

 yellow-rumps, I dare say ; but why should they 

 so universally pitch upon the inoffensive bluebird, 

 I should like to know. It is to be added, however, 

 to make the story truthful, that if there are no 

 bluebirds handy, the warblers take it out by a 

 free chasing of each other. To watch them, one 

 would think that life, by their apprehension of 

 it, were all a holiday. 



And while I am talking of bluebirds I ought to 

 mention their habit of hanging about bird boxes 

 in these last days of their Northern season. Only 

 this forenoon, since the foregoing paragraphs 

 were written, I passed a box perched upon a 

 pole beside a house, and at least six bluebirds 

 were sitting upon its platform, or investigating 

 its different apartments. Sometimes a pair (so 

 they looked, one bright colored, the other dull) 

 sat side by side before a door, like married lovers. 

 Sometimes one would go inside, sometimes both, 

 while out of the next door another bird would be 

 peeping. The box was very unlikely to have 

 been their home; the countryside is overrun 

 with bluebirds, too many by half to have sum- 

 mered hereabout ; but evidently the sight of it 



