262 HASTY OBSERVATION 



come to grief in a hurry. The fine, strong 

 threads of the net defied his murderous beak 

 and talons. He was engulfed as completely as 

 is a fly in a spider's web, and the more he 

 struggled the more hopeless his case became. 

 It was a pigeon-hawk, and these little maraud- 

 ers are very saucy. 



My neighbor says that in the city of Brook- 

 lyn he has known kingbirds to nest in boxes 

 like martins and bluebirds. I question this 

 observation, though it may be true. The cousin 

 of the kingbird, the great crested flycatcher, 

 builds in cavities in trees, and its relative, the 

 phoebe-bird, nests under bridges and hay-sheds. 

 Hence there is this fact to start with in favor 

 of my neighbor's observation. 



But when a lady from Pennsylvania writes 

 me that she has seen "swallows rolling and 

 dabbling in the mud in early spring, their 

 breasts so covered with it that it would take but 

 little stretch of imagination to believe they had 

 just emerged from the bottom of the pond be- 

 side which they were playing," I am more than 

 skeptical. The lady has not seen straight. 

 The swallows were not rolling in the mud; 

 there was probably not a sjDeck of mud upon 

 their plumage, but a little upon their beaks 

 and feet. The red of their breasts was their 

 own proper color. They were building their 

 nests, as my correspondent knew, but they did 

 not carefully mix and knead the mud, as she 

 thought they did; they had selected mortar 

 already of the proper sort. 



