286 GLEANINGS FROM NATURE. 



Woodpeckers, before the settlement of the prairies, 

 were confined to forest areas on account of a lack of 

 suitable nesting places ; but they ha*ve discovered that 

 the cornices of buildings, church steeples, telegraph 

 poles and even rotten fence posts, will, with a little 

 labor, furnish a lodging place for eggs, and so they 

 have spread far and wide over the treeless regions of 

 the western States. Bank swallows have utilized for 

 nesting places the artificial roadbeds of railways in 

 some of the flatter counties of the State, and hence 

 their presence in such regions does not antedate that 

 of .the "iron horse." 



Many rapacious birds, as the smaller hawks, owls 

 and kingfishers, since the clearing away of the forests, 

 use the top of telegraph poles as resting places from 

 whence they can swoop down upon such unfortunate 

 prey as may come within their vision; while blue 

 birds and swallows, in lieu of a better resting place, 

 often line themselves along the wire and twitter and 

 chirp to one another, wholly unconscious of that elec- 

 tric force which is propelling the thoughts of man at 

 lightning speed along the slender thread beneath their 

 feet. 



But the shrikes or butcher birds have put to use 

 another device of man, and in a peculiar manner : 

 namely, the barbs upon the barbed wire fences as spikes 

 upon which to impale their prey. For the shrikes are 

 the bushwhackers among birds. No others are so 

 notorious for cruelty and rapacity. Not only for food, 

 but apparently for the gratification of a blood-thirsty 

 instinct, they kill forms of life beneath them merely 

 as a means of killing time. They alone of all birds 



