200 IN BIRD LAND. 



in order to satisfy the demands of their stomachs ! 

 With intervals of scarcely more than a few seconds, 

 they bound out from a perch, seize an insect on 

 the wing, and wheel back again. For hours this 

 half work, half frolic is kept up. By the way, al- 

 most all birds sometimes engage in this flycatcher 

 game of taking their prey on the wing. The Balti- 

 more orioles, the bluebirds, the yellow-bellied wood- 

 peckers, the crested tits, the chippies, the indigo- 

 birds, and even the white-breasted nuthatches and 

 English sparrows, to say nothing of many species of 

 warblers, catch insects in this way. 



Many birds have to " scratch for a living," and 

 that in a literal sense. There is the towhee bunt- 

 ing, for example. Instead of getting down on his 

 breast, however, like the hen or the partridge, he 

 stretches himself up on his legs as if they were stilts, 

 and then bobs up and down in an amusing fashion, 

 while he scatters leaves and dirt to side and rear. 

 I do not know whether the robins scratch or not, 

 but they often jerk the leaves from the ground with 

 their bills, and hurl them away with a half-disdain- 

 ful air. Several young wood-thrushes kept in a 

 cage removed obstructions in the same way. 



Even the merry bobolink, the Beau Brummel of 

 our meadows and clover-fields, cannot spend every 

 day 



" Untwisting all the chains that tie 

 The hidden soul o£ harmony ; " 



for the time comes when he must do the work of a 

 staid husband and father, and help to take care of 



