LANDLORD TO THE BIRDS 17 



one flicker, two or three years ago, taking great 

 delight in drumming on the under side of the tin for 

 fifteen minutes at a time, like a small boy with an 

 old dishpan. Sometimes he made so much noise 

 it was a nuisance. Almost invariably when you 

 start up a flicker it is from the ground. I used to 

 come on them over and over in the middle of the 

 lawn, and was not surprised when I found that the 

 investigations of flickers' crops and stomachs showed 

 they live very largely upon ants. Any one who has 

 been troubled by ant-hills in a lawn (and who has 

 not?) will be glad to learn that the government 

 bureau found as many as five thousand ants in a 

 single stomach, and that flickers, when natural 

 holes are not available, will take readily to artificial 

 boxes. 



Bluebirds, too, will readily nest in boxes, and if 

 you had sat as I did one day, quietly in the orchard, 

 and watched a single bluebird alternating song with 

 caterpillar-eating a caterpillar, then a bit of mel- 

 ody, then another caterpillar, and another bit of 

 melody, and so on, unceasingly, for two hours you 

 would still further rejoice in the presence of this 

 beloved messenger of spring. The king-bird, too, is 

 an orchard nester. He bears the unpleasant techni- 

 cal name of Tymnnus tymnnus, but none that I have 

 observed merited even one of these terms, let alone 

 the double dose. It is the characteristic of a tyrant 

 to oppress everybody, especially the weak, but the 

 king-birds reserve their pugnacity for birds larger 

 and stronger than themselves namely, the hawks 

 and crows. I well remember, in my boyhood, a 

 pair of king-birds which nested in our orchard, at a 



