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Bird - Lore 



to light on her as on the branch at her side, or he steps on her back as he walks 

 across to place material on the other side of her. 



Doves are peculiar birds. They do not lift their heads when they drink, 

 but submerge their bills and suck the water up. They do not feed their young 

 like most perching birds, but regurgitate half-digested food into their throats. 

 A friend, looking at the parent Dove feeding her young, said, ''They are scrap- 

 ping." It looked as though they were 'scrapping' with clenched bills, but it 

 was the regurgitation process. 



Although the Dove is proverbially gentle, I once saw the male drive a Blue 



THE ROSE-BREASTED GROSBEAK AND THE BROWN THRASHER AT THE BATH 



Jay from the tree in which the female Dove sat on their nest, and when the 

 Jay stopped in a nearby tree he went to the nest and took the female's place 

 on the eggs, as much as to say, "Come and rob the nest if you can." One 

 morning the Robin flew to the bath where the male Dove was drinking, evi- 

 dently expecting to scare him away, but the Dove raised both wings in protest 

 and stood his ground. 



Last fall a pair of Red-headed Woodpeckers began excavating in a dead 

 box elder limb in our yard. We wondered at this, for although Downy exca- 

 vates a winter home, the Red-head goes South for the winter. Do they begin 

 their next year's nest the autumn before? I planned to cut off the dead limb, 

 but my curiosity was aroused and it was allowed to remain for 'scientific' 

 purposes. I knew that Red-heads were lazy birds, watching for insects from 

 fence-posts, and sometimes even taking them in flight, like flycatchers, instead 

 of industriously searching and drilling for them like well-bred Woodpeckers, 



