TALKS WITH YOUNG OBSERVERS 297 



three weeks. They hunted the same feeding- 

 ground over and over, and always seemed to 

 find an abundance. The parent liirds did the 

 hunting, the young did tlie calling and the eat- 

 ing. At any hour in the day you could find 

 the troop slowly making their way over some 

 part of their territory. 



Later in the season one of the parent birds 

 seemed smitten with some fatal malady. If 

 birds have leprosy, this must have been leprosy. 

 The poor thing dropped down through a maple- 

 tree close by the house, barely able to flit a few 

 feet at a time. Its plumage appeared greasy 

 and filthy, and its strength was about gone. I 

 placed it in the branches of a spruce-tree, and 

 never saw it afterward. 



Ill 



A boy brought me a dead bird the other 

 morning which his father had picked up on the 

 railroad. It had probably been killed by strik- 

 ing the telegraph wires. As it was a bird the 

 like of which he had never seen before, he 

 wanted to know its name. It was a wee bird, 

 mottled gray and brown like nearly aU our 

 ground birds, as the sparrows, the meadow- 

 larks, the quail: a color that makes the bird 

 practically invisible to its enemies in the air 

 above. Unlike the common sparrows, its little 

 round wings were edged with yellow, with a 

 tinge of yellow on its shoulders; hence its 

 name, the yellow- winged sparrow. It has also 



