A BIRDS' FREE LUNCH 



One would not think the food would digest when 

 taken in such haste and trepidation. 



While the jays are feeding, swallowing morsel 

 after morsel very rapidly, the chickadees flit about in 

 an anxious, peevish manner, lest there be none left 

 for themselves. 



I suspect the jays carry the food off and hide it, 

 as they certainly do com when I put it out for the 

 hens. The jay has a capacious throat; he will lodge 

 half a dozen or more kernels of com in it, stretching 

 his neck up as he takes them, to give them room, and 

 then fly away to an old bird's-nest or a caterpillar's 

 nest and deposit them in it. But in this respect the 

 little kettle cannot call the big pot black. The chick- 

 adee also will carry away what it cannot eat. One 

 day I dug a dozen or more white grubs — the larvae 

 of some beetle — out of a decayed maple on my 

 woodpile and placed them upon my window-sill. 

 The chickadees soon discovered them, and fell to 

 carrying them off as fast as ever they could, dis- 

 tributing them among the branches of the Norway 

 spruces. Among the grubs was one large white 

 one half the size of one's Uttle finger. One of the 

 chickadees seized this; it was all he could carry, 

 but hfe made off with it. The mate to this grub 

 I found rolled up in a smooth cell in a mass of 

 decayed wood at the heart of the old maple re- 

 ferred to; it was full of frost. I carried it in by the 

 fire, and the next day it was ahve and apparently 

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