280 KNOWING BIRDS THROUGH STORIES 



der the cattle shed and the catbird that nested in the pip- 

 pin tree, but it did not much resemble either. It was a 

 beautiful bluish gray with black wings and tail, and 

 always looked so fresh and clean that we were fond of it. 

 The nest was placed so low that by standing on an old 

 barrel we could see the eggs and watch the young birds. 

 These birds were not shy, and were always on the watch 

 about their nest, tho they did not make any such outcry 

 when we came near as did mother catbird. 



They nested there year after year, seldom locating the 

 new nest more than fifteen or twenty feet from the old 

 one. They and their nest form one of my earliest recol- 

 lections, and when I left home at sixteen to enter college 

 they were still nesting in the old place, so of course I 

 knew them pretty well. With a cornfield on one side, a 

 pasture on the other, and a neighbor's oat field within a 

 hundred yards, food was always abundant. True, these 

 crops sometimes alternated, but they were always there. 

 Those birds fed on grasshoppers and beetles, with an oc- 

 casional mouse for dessert, so they could have had no 

 better hunting ground. 



I had known these birds for a number of years when 

 one spring I began to find grasshoppers and beetles im- 

 paled on hedge thorns or on barbs on the wire near the 

 nest. These insects were stuck so that they could not 

 wriggle loose, and yet were not hurt seriously enough to 

 die for some time. Once or twice I found a mouse secure- 

 ly stuck on a barb by the skin of his back, wiggling and 

 twisting in a vain attempt to get free. This appeared to 

 me cruel and horrible, but I had no idea who was doing it. 

 I knew that small boys had been coming to the orchard for 

 apples, and I thought they were amusing themselves in 



