76 GLEANINGS FROM NATURE. 



turned a complete somersault in the air. Again, 

 another flew close to the ground within a foot of my 

 reclining form, caught a small moth hovering above 

 the grass, and then darting back to its perch gave the 

 insect two or three whacks against a branch, either to 

 kill it or to straighten it so that it could be easily 

 swallowed, and then gulped it down. 



One caught a moth as large as a cabbage butterfly, 

 and struck it on a limb for several seconds. Four 

 times the luckless insect got away but was each time 

 recaptured in short order, and was finally, after 

 repeated shakings and beatings, swallowed, wings and 

 all the bird stretching and gaping for some little 

 time thereafter, much as does a hen which has swal- 

 lowed a tight fit for her oesophagus. It seems, there- 

 fore, that if the insect be small it is swallowed as soon 

 as caught, often before the bird reaches its perch. If 

 large, the beating on the limb or other resting place 

 of the bird takes place. 



When insect life, in and close about the thorn tree 

 became, for a time, scarce, one or two of the birds 

 would fly to the near-by fence and flitting along its 

 angles would sometimes be rewarded by starting up 

 an unlucky insect which would be instantly nabbed. 

 Again returning to the thorn they would fly to a 

 papaw, on whose large, velvety, expanding buds 

 small bees and flies were plentiful ; but the thorn 

 seemed their favorite base of operations, and to it 

 they invariably returned. 



The long tail of the gnat-catcher serves it admira- 

 bly as a rudder, and in the stiff breeze which was 

 blowing, was bent now this way, now that, to preserve 



