48 SHARP EYES. 



modeled nest of the goldfinch or king-bird, and what 

 a gulf between its indifference toward its young and 

 their solicitude ! Its irregular manner of laying also 

 seems better suited to a parasite like our cow-bird, or 

 the European cuckoo, than to a regular nest-builder. ' 



This observer, like most sharp-eyed persons, sees 

 plenty of interesting things as he goes about his 

 work. He one day saw a white swallow, which is of 

 rare occurrence. He saw a bird, a sparrow he thinks, 

 fly against the side of a horse and fill his beak with 

 hair from the loosened coat of the animal. He saw a 

 shrike pursue a chickadee, when the latter escaped by 

 taking refuge in a small hole in a tree. One day in 

 early spring he saw two hen-hawks that were circling 

 and screaming high in air, approach each other, ex- 

 tend a claw and clasping them together, fall toward 

 the earth flapping and struggling as if they were tied 

 together ; on nearing the ground they separated and 

 soared aloft again. He supposed that it was not a 

 passage of war but of love, and that the hawks were 

 toying fondly with each other. 



He further relates a curious circumstance of find- 

 ing a humming-bird in the upper part of a barn with 

 its bill stuck fast in a crack of one of the large tim- 

 bers, dead, of course, with wings extended, and as dry 

 as a chip. The bird seems to have died as it had 

 lived, on the wing, and its last act was indeed a 

 ghastly parody of its living career. Fancy this nim- 

 ble, flashing sprite, whose life was passed probing the 

 honeyed depths of flowers, at last thrusting its bill 



