BIRD CURIOS. 35 



crowd to an individual, but the reader must bear 

 in mind that a close logical unity cannot be pre- 

 served in a chapter composed of brie a- brae; and, 

 besides, is not every crowd made up of individuals? 

 How great was my surprise, one summer day, to 

 see a purple grackle stalking about in his regal 

 manner on the flat rocks of a shallow woodland 

 stream, and then suddenly wheel about, pull a crab 

 out of the water, and fly off with it to a log, where 

 he beat it to pieces and devoured it ! I doubt if 

 many persons are aware that this bird dines on 

 crab. On the same day another grackle, striding 

 pompously about in the shallow water, suddenly 

 sprang up into the air, some six or eight feet, and 

 caught an insect on the wing. This was a perform- 

 ance on the part of a crow blackbird never before 

 witnessed by me. 



One day in the woods my saucy little madcap, 

 the crested titmouse, was tilting about on the twigs 

 of a sapling like a trapeze performer in a circus. 

 Sometimes he hung lightly to the under side of a 

 spray, and pecked nits and other dainties from the 

 lower surface of a leaf. While doing so, he hap- 

 pened to catch sight of an insect buzzing by ; he 

 flung himself at it like a feathered arrow ; but for 

 some reason he missed his mark, and the insect, in 

 its efforts to escape, let itself drop toward the 

 ground. An interesting scuffle followed ; the tit- 

 mouse whirled around and around, dashing this way 

 and that like zigzag lightning, in hot pursuit, flutter- 

 ing his wings very rapidly until he alighted on the 



