54 NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



which she was carrying away to her nest, and on examining the victim 

 I found it was a Red-winged blackbird fully fledged which the Bittern had 

 speared through the side with her daggerlike beak. There is little doubt 

 that the callow young of our perching birds are devoured by numerous 

 flesh-eating species. The mortality among eggs is even greater than 

 among the nestlings. Many species of otherwise inoffensive birds become 

 egg-eaters during the nesting season. Blackbirds, cuckoos, catbirds 

 and wrens invade their neighbors' nests and destroy their treasures. 

 Crows and jays are probably the worst destroyers of eggs and nestlings and 

 I have seen the Crow on so many occasions in this nefarious business that 

 I doubt if I could ever consent to regard him as a reputable citizen. The 

 Cowbird is fully as noisome a pestilence from the standpoint of bird pro- 

 tection, for every young Cowbird is reared at the expense of a whole brood 

 of vireos, warblers, finches or some other song bird. 



Among the fourfooted enemies, next after the cat, I should place 

 the red squirrel. One summer while sojourning at a lakeside camp I saw 

 a pair of red squirrels succeed in destroying every robin's, flicker's, 

 vireo's and warbler's nest in the grove. Three pairs of robins in the 

 vicinity of our camp had failed to raise any young up to the middle of 

 August, when I witnessed the destruction of the last nest. The poor 

 birds had evidently decided to try their fate high on the limb of an elm 

 tree which stood in front of our cabin. One day I heard their battle cry 

 and came upon the scene just in time to see the squirrel dislodged by the 

 robin's fierce attack and fall a distance of 50 feet to the ground, but this 

 did not discourage him sufficiently, for later in the day I saw him make a 

 sudden dash up the limb and seize an egg in his mouth but drop it sud- 

 denly as if afraid of another attack. A pair of flickers had built their 

 nest in a stump near the camp and the young were apparently nearly half 

 grown before the squirrels discovered them, but the peculiar notes of the 

 young birds attracted their attention and the squirrels after investigating 

 the hole killed the young birds one by one, the last victim being so large 

 that the scjuirrel could scarcely drag it from the nest, but he succeeded 



