ORCHARD SECRETS 



thicker foliage and the closer branches of the near-by 

 pear-trees offered much more concealment, and upon 

 these I had fixed my scrutiny, and had only run my 

 eye hurriedly over the more open branches of the 

 apple-trees. But there was the nest near the end of a 

 long, low, horizontal branch, with no screen of foU- 

 age, and likely to escape the attention on this very 

 account. 



The picture of those kingbirds going slowly up 

 almost straight in the air and seizing those insects 

 lingered in my eye. I think at times that they rose 

 nearly one hundred feet, indicating their remarkably 

 sharp vision. In no instance could I see the bug. 

 Probably the eyes of all birds are much sharper than 

 our own. Day after day I see the bluebird fly from 

 her perch on the telephone- wire in front of me to the 

 road or the turf forty or fifty feet away, and pick 

 up some small worm or insect which I myself could 

 not see. Probably the optical instrument of birds 

 is no more perfect or powerful than our own, but 

 the big brain behind it — big relatively — is con- 

 stantly thinking bug or worm, so to speak. I pre- 

 sume most men could see a gold dollar farther than 

 a bird could. The hawk poised on wing high in 

 the air will see a field mouse in the grass beneath 

 him that under the same conditions would escape 

 our vision. Field mice are in its mind, yes, in its 

 blood. The buzzard, "housing herself in the sky,'* 

 sees with her craving maw her proper food miles and 



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