across the orange flowers, and the next thing I 

 see is the swift, back in his place, throwing his 

 head about in the air, licking down the stupid 

 bluebottle-fly. 



A spider crawls over the rail behind him. 

 He turns and snaps it up. A fly buzzes about 

 his head, but he will not jump with all four feet, 

 and so loses it. A humming-bird is fanning the 

 butterfly-weed, and he looks on with interest not 

 unmixed with fear. Now the bugs, butterflies, 

 hornets, and wasps make up the motley crowd 

 of visitants to his garden, and Sceloporus stretches 

 out in the warmth again. He is hardly asleep 

 when a bird's shadow passes across the rails. 

 The sharp scratch of scales and claws is heard at 

 half a dozen places on the pile at once, and every 

 swift has ducked around his rail out of sight. 



An enemy ! The shadow sweeps on across 

 the melon-field, and above in the sky I see a 

 turkey-buzzard wheeling. This is no enemy. 

 Evidently the swifts mistook the buzzard's 

 shadow for that of the sharp-shinned hawk. 

 Had it been the hawk, my little bobtailed 

 friend might have been taking a dizzy ride 

 through the air to some dead tree -top at that 

 [87] 



