AMERICAN ORNITHOLOGY. 379 



with water seemed to be the least acceptable to all the birds, probably 

 because they could not carry it away. The cottage cheese was taken 

 in preference to anything else, crackers next, then bread. Remains of 

 strawberry, raspberry and blueberry cake were untouched until other 

 food grew scanty. Uncooked cereals they would pick at but could not 

 carry away and this seemed to be the chief motive for visits to the 

 counter, during the early part of July when growing families demanded 

 so much food. Hard boiled eggs were eagerly disposed of, the yolks 

 first. Potatoes were left to harden and be thrown overboard. Boiled 

 macaroni was eyed suspiciously until the cheese was gone, then test- 

 ed and found tolerable by a mother grackle who flew away with two 

 three-inch pieces dangling on either side of her bill. 



I must confess, I would not have invited the blackbirds to my feast, 

 not on account of race prejudice, but chiefly because of their discordant 

 voices and quarrelsome ways. Then I do not like the looks of 

 their cruel and expressionless eyes, stuck on the side of their irridescent 

 heads like yellow buttons. The young ones squawk for food as if they 

 were strangling to death and it is distressing to hear it. Early in the 

 morning when all the birds are hungry, they are too intent upon help- 

 ing themselves to pay much attention to each other. About eight 

 o'clock one morning, I saw one redheaded woodpecker, three thrashers, 

 six sparrows, two catbirds and four blackbirds all eating at one time on 

 or around the bench. An hour later one big domineering grackle suc- 

 cessfully kept every other bird away by his threats and sharp thrusts 

 because he had had enough himself. 



A WOODLAND APARTMENT HOUSE. 



Even the beasts of the field and the birds of the air seem to have com- 

 menced the adoption of modern ideas in this progressive age. Last 

 spring we found what might be called an animal apartment house. 

 The whole structure occupies a space of but six feet in length, three 

 feet depth, and seven feet in height, yet it was occupied by four families 

 at the same time. The basement or ground floor was given over to a 

 pair of chipmunks. Their home was dug in the earth directly under the 

 dead trunk of a fallen oak tree, which composed the structure proper. 

 The chipmunk's home is hidden by the plant life which has grown up 

 about the tree trunk, and consequently does not appear in the illustration 

 of the "apartment house." In this illustration, five-eighths of an inch 

 from the left margin and one and one quarter from the bottom is an 

 opening in the stump, which is the entrance to the stronghold of a pair 

 of House Wrens. This family occupied what might be called the first 

 floor of the house. A little more than half way up on the right hand 



