116 A-BIRDING ON A BRONCO. 



to keep his hand in against meeting bigger boys 

 than he! When coming with material, one of 

 the bee-birds got caught in It heavy rope of cob- 

 web that dangled from the nest, and had to flut- 

 ter hard to extricate itself. About their nests 

 these birds seemed as home-loving as any others. 

 Their domesticity quite surprised me ; they had 

 always seemed such harsh, scolding, aggressive 

 birds ! When one of them sat among the green 

 leaves, pluming the soft sulphur yellow feathers 

 of its breast, it looked so gentle and attractive 

 that it was a shock when the familiar petulant 

 screams again jarred the air. The birds often 

 hunted from the fence beyond the sycamore, 

 and flew from post to post with legs dangling, 

 shaking their wings as they lit, with a shrill 

 kit 1 r ! r f r r r r . 



The sycamore was a regular apartment house ; 

 so many birds were moving among the boughs 

 it was impossible to tell where they all lived. 

 One day I found a pair of doves sitting on a 

 sunny branch above me. The one I took to be 

 the male sat perched crosswise, while his mate sat 

 facing him, lengthwise of the limb. He calmly 

 fluffed out his feathers and preened himself, 

 while his meek spouse watched him. She flut- 

 tered her wings, teasing him to feed her, but he 

 kept on dressing out his plumes. Then she edged 

 a little closer, and almost essayed to touch his 

 majesty with her pretty blue bill, but he sat with 



