176 SOME COMMON LAND-BIRDS. 



bird, or the bird who knows it all. Some demand the whole 

 bath for themselves; others are content to share it; some dip 

 and spatter in one way, while others dress and preen them- 

 selves after quite a different fashion. It was always amusing 

 to me to see a certain motherly old robin, who was in the 

 greatest temper if any other bird attempted to use the bath 

 while she was in it. She always intended to have the whole 

 pan and got it, though not at other times noticeably over- 

 bearing to the other little birds. There, too, those feathered 

 ruffians, the English sparrows, met their match in the purple 

 finches, whose company the sparrows seemed to desire so much 

 that they acted the toady quite humanly, and meekly followed 

 their bright-coated cousins about, pretending to peck at the 

 fallen mountain ash berries, though they despised such food. 



While you are watching birds drink, please observe the way 

 a pigeon drinks. All pigeons drink in the same way, and no 

 other birds drink like them. The difference is well worth 

 observing if you do not remember what it is. But there are 

 other points of interest about birds' drinking; not only how, 

 but what they drink. What do you suppose the albatrosses 

 drink, and the fulmars, the shearwaters, the petrels, and all 

 those birds that wander continually on the high seas and never 

 come to land except to nest? Salt water undoubtedly. There 

 is no record that they do this, and some persons have supposed 

 that because a man would die of thirst if he drank sea-water, 

 it would affect these birds in the same way, and that therefore 

 they never drink at all. This certainly is bad reasoning. All 

 the probabilities are against it, as we shall see. 



There is a class of birds that live part of the year on the 

 seacoast and part of the year inland, like the grebes, the loons, 

 and those gulls and terns that nest upon the prairies and by 

 the shores of inland lakes. Half the year they can get noth- 



