"THE STRANGE THINGS BIRDS DO AND THE 

 STRANGE THINGS THEY SAY." 



THERE is a delightful uncertainty of expectation in study- 

 ing birds. You never can be sure but the bird you know so 

 well will next moment do something so unexpected that you 

 will feel that no one else in all the world has seen such a 

 strange, true thing. 



Most birds can swim a little under compulsion. The pecto- 

 ral sandpiper voluntarily alights on the ocean. The wounded 

 stilt swims, the wounded least sandpiper dives, and even a 

 heron will swim if it falls into the water; yet none of these 

 are swimming birds by habit. 



And often, too, a bird will suddenly change its habits, as 

 when swallows alight in trees, and when domestic pigeons 

 alight in bushes to eat berries, or when one builds its nest 

 in a tree, as I have known one to do ; or, when such exclusively 

 ground birds as the willet, the yellow-legs plover, the whistling 

 plover, the Wilson's snipe and other waders, during their breed- 

 ing season, perch by preference on the branches of trees. But 

 what shall we say when a hawk eats choke cherries; when 

 owls hunt by day, and bitterns hunt by night ; when king- 

 fishers eat insects, and chickadees eat meat, and sea-gulls are 

 said to live on corn ? 



It is not unusual to hear of a bird adopting a family of an 

 entirely different species, as cats sometimes adopt rabbits or 

 puppies, and as dogs have been known to become responsible 

 for broods of chickens. There is a record of a male cardinal 

 grosbeak becoming foster-father to two young Baltimore orioles ; 



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