THE SPRING BIRD PROCESSION 



the sensitive tail, and the whole behavior of the bird 

 makes him about the prettiest actor in the little fly- 

 catching drama of the season. This behavior would sug- 

 gest that the bird feeds upon a particular kind of insect; 

 at all times and places it is engaged in the same striking 

 ocrobatic feats; just as the black and white creeping war- 

 ijler is always busy in the hunt for some minute insect on 

 Ihe trunks of trees. 



I recall several of our insect-feeders each of 

 which seems to have its own insect province. The 

 Kentucky warbler, where I have known it on the 

 Potomac, fed for the most part on insects which it 

 gathered from the under side of the leaves of certain 

 plants near the ground. Hence it is classed among 

 the ground warblers, like the Maryland yellow- 

 throat. The red-eyed vireo feeds largely on the in- 

 sects which hide on the under side of leaves in the 

 tree-tops. 



When the oriole first comes in May, he is very 

 busy searching into the heart of the apple-tree 

 bloom for some small insect. I have seen Wilson*s 

 black-capped warbler doing the same thing. I have 

 seen a score or more of myrtle warblers very active 

 amid the bushes and trees along a stream, snapping 

 up some slow-moving gauzy insect drifting about 

 there. They often festoon the stream with their 

 curving and looping lines of blue and black and 

 yellow. 



The feeding-ground of one bird is often an empty 



9 



