28 EVERYDAY BIRDS 



It is really a wonderful performance. There 

 are very few kinds of birds that do anything like 

 it. Of itself it is enough to make the song spar- 

 row famous, and it is well worth any one's while 

 to hear it and see it done. Nobody can see it 

 without believing that birds have a true appre- 

 ciation of music. They are better off than some 

 human beings, at all events. They know one 

 tune from another. 



A lady correspondent was good enough to 

 send me, not long ago, a pleasing account of the 

 doings of a pair of song sparrows, which, as she 

 says, came to her for six seasons. 



" One year," she writes, " they happened to 

 build where I could watch them from the win- 

 dow, and they did a very curious thing. They 

 fed the little birds with all sorts of worms of dif- 

 ferent colors until they were ready to leave the 

 nest ; then the male brought a pure white moth 

 and held it near the nest, which was in some 

 stems of a rosebush a few inches from the 

 ground, on a level with the lower rail of a picket 

 fence. 



" One of the little birds came out of the nest 

 at once and followed its parent, who went side- 

 wise, always holding the dazzling white morsel 

 just out of the youngster's reach. In this man- 

 ner they crossed the lane, climbed the inclined 



