A bobwhite had stowed away 5,000 more of the 

 same variety. A mourning dove was not too sad 

 to eat 70OO seeds of the yellow sorrel as one day's 



ration. 



There are 465 species of wild birds that inhabit 

 ordinary gardens everywhere, from city backyards 

 to the rive-thousand-acre "bonanza" wheat-farms 

 of the Northwest. These birds are no Hooverizers. 

 Thev eat and they eat; then fly and fly; then eat 

 some more. 



The rubythroated hummingbird, an inch long 

 and wei<rhin<r one-tenth of an ounce, spends its win- 

 ters in South America. It leaves New Jersey, say, 

 on a certain morning, makes 300 miles or so, at the 

 speed of an airplane — and stops for lunch, eating 

 several times its own weight in an hour or so. Its 

 afternoon schedule is about the same. When it reaches 

 the west coast of Florida, it spends practically all 

 dav stoking its tiny body with food in preparation 

 for the seven-hundred-mile flight across the Gulf of 

 Mexico, which it makes always at night. It would 

 be a pity to kill or frighten away a rubythroat, so 

 little and so lovely — and so useful as a snare of 

 naughty bugs. 



Brother Wright had no difficulty in convincing 

 Farmers Jones, Smith and Robinson that if the fly- 

 catcher, the meadow lark, the swift, the swallow 

 and the nighthawk had been more hospitably re- 

 ceived among their fields and groves, the Hessian 



17 



