80 LOCUSTS AND WILD HONEY 



efforts with great solicitude. The young bird strug- 

 gled valiantly with the cicada, hut made no headway 

 in swallowing it, when the mother took it from him 

 and flew to the sidewalk, and proceeded to break and 

 bruise it more thoroughly. Then she again placed 

 it in his beak, and seemed to say, "There, try it 

 now," and sympathized so thoroughly with his ef- 

 forts that she repeated many of his motions and con- 

 tortions. But the great fly was unyielding, and, in- 

 deed, seemed ridiculously disproportioned to the beak 

 that held it. The young bird fluttered and fluttered, 

 and screamed, "I'm stuck, I'm stuck! "till the 

 anxious parent again seized the morsel and carried it 

 to an iron railing, where she came down upon it for 

 the space of a minute with all the force and momen- 

 tum her beak could command. Then she offered it 

 to her young a third time, but with the same result 

 as before, except that this time the bird dropped it; 

 but she reached the ground as soon as the cicada did, 

 and taking it in her beak flew some distance to a 

 high board fence, where she sat motionless for some 

 moments. While pondering the problem how that 

 fly should be broken, the male bluebird approached 

 her, and said very plainly, and I thought rather 

 curtly, " Give me that bug, " but she quickly resented 

 his interference and flew farther away, where she sat 

 apparently quite discouraged when I last saw her. 



The bluebird is a home bird, and I am never tired 

 of recurring to him. His coming or reappearance in 

 the spring marks a new chapter in the progress of 

 the season ; things are never quite the same after one 



