Birds and Seasons in My Garden 185 



pensed with, in winter he becomes a vital part of the landscape. Add half a 

 dozen Jays to a snowy landscape, sharpened by the clean, black outline of 

 bare trees with blue sky above, and you seem to have the animate revelation 

 of the whole. At this season, the Jays, generally so furtive, become confident 

 and almost friendly, thanks to their ration of dog-biscuit broken into bits no 

 bigger than acorns. "Why," we said to ourselves, "might not a continuance 

 of the supply act as a bribe against egg-hunting?" 



All this spring and summer we have kept this food on the winter shelf, and 

 on another, standing on a shady wall, with its long legs protected by inverted 

 tin pans, granary fashion, from the thefts of field-rats. It is rash to assume too 

 much by mere inference, but this one thing I know, two families of Jays have 

 been reared in the garden spruces, while two other pairs have made visits 

 daily to the food-shelves, and but once this season have I been called by 

 the scolding and alarm notes of song-birds to find a Jay the center of trouble. 



But back to the cherry trees. While the action in the great cherry tree 

 seems usually of the melodramatic, or even tragic, order, the happenings in 

 the four slender trees of the copse by the garden-house savor more of comedy. 

 Here the Catbirds flirt and preen, and the Brown Thrasher, with straight 

 flight and outspread wings, sails through, bearing twin cherries to his bushy 

 retreat that these many years we have called the Thrashery. The feeding 

 methods of birds are well illustrated in the Cherry Tree Comedy. The Cat- 

 birds, Thrashers and Robins often 'bob' for the cherries in half flight, as 

 people strive for apples at Hallowe'en. The Orioles cling to the branches and 

 pry among the clusters, even as they rifle the apple-blossoms of insects and, 

 casually, honey, in May, while the heavy-bodied Flickers secure the fruit, 

 carry it to a place of deposit, and then, after several trips, sit them comfort- 

 ably down, as if picking ants on the lawn, and make a hearty meal. 



Yesterday morning, being curious as to the constant rattle of cherry-pits 

 upon the roof of the garden-house, which was in no wise under the tree, I 

 found that a trio of Flickers has ensconced themselves on a ridge at the peak 

 and were rapidly dropping the stones from their store, where they glanced 

 down the shingled eaves to the ground. Then down on the stone wall arose a 

 note, the perfect love song of a perfect Wood Thrush, denoting that the life 

 of the nest is still in progress. August 10 is the last date that I have recorded 

 for the complete song — by middle July it usually passes. Within a dozen feet 

 of me is the singer. Enraptured, unafraid, he sings, and pauses on the zither 

 note, listens, as it were, and picks up the strain, which another thrush over by 

 the pool is answering. Along the wall comes an apparently full-grown bird, its 

 way of using its wings and opening of the beak alone suggest the nestling of a 

 first brood, perhaps. 



The musician pauses, flies into the copse, returns with a cherry which he 

 places in the open beak, and calmly continues his song. What an artist is 

 Nature! 



