BIRD ENEMIES. 15 



once to the rescue, when the arch enemy was upon 

 him. There is probably little truth in the popular 

 notion that snakes charm birds. The black snake if 

 the most subtle, alert, and devilish of our snakes, and 

 I have never seen him have any but young, helpless 

 foirds in his mouth. 



We have one parasitical bird, the cow-bird, so-called 

 because it walks about amid the grazing cattle and 

 seizes the insects which their heavy tread sets going, 

 which is an enemy of most of the smaller birds. It 

 drops its egg in the nest of the song-sparrow, the 

 social sparrow, the snow-bird, the vireos, and the 

 wood -warblers, and as a rule it is the only egg in 

 the nest that issues successfully. Either the eggs o£ 

 the rightful owner of the nest are not hatched, or else 

 the young are overridden and overreached by the 

 parasite and perish prematurely. 



Among the worst enemies of our birds are the so- 

 called " collectors," men who plunder nests and mur- 

 der their owners in the name of science. Not the 

 genuine ornithologist, for no one is more careful of 

 squandering bird life than he ; but the sham ornithol- 

 ogist, the man whose vanity or affectation happens to 

 take an ornithological turn. He is seized with an 

 itching for a collection of eggs and birds because it 

 happens to be the fashion, or because it gives him the 

 air of a man of science. But in the majority of cases 

 the motive is a mercenary one ; the collector expects 

 to sell these spoils of the groves and orchards. Hob 

 bing nests and killing birds becomes a business with 

 him. He goes about it systematically, and becomes 

 an expert in circumventing and slaying our songsters. 

 Every town of any considerable size is infested with 

 one or more of these bird highwaymen, and every 



