SPRING AT THE CAPITAL 139 
courts of the Treasury building there is a fountain 
with several trees growing near. By midsummer 
the blackbirds become so bold as to venture within 
this court. Various fragments of food, tossed from 
the surrounding windows, reward their temerity. 
When a crust of dry bread defies their beaks, they 
have been seen to drop it into the water, and, when 
it had become soaked sufficiently, to take it out 
again. 
They build a nest of coarse sticks and mud, the 
whole burden of the enterprise seeming to devolve 
upon the female. For several successive mornings, 
just after sunrise, I used to notice a pair of them 
flying to and fro in the air above me as I hoed in 
the garden, directing their course, on the one hand, 
to a marshy piece .of ground about half a mile dis- 
tant, and disappearing, on their return, among the 
trees about the Capitol. Returning, the female 
always had her beak loaded with building material, 
while the male, carrying nothing, seemed to act as 
her escort, flying a little above and in advance of 
her, and utterimg now and then his husky, discor- 
dant note. As I tossed a lump of earth up at them, 
the frightened mother bird dropped her mortar, and 
the pair skurried away, much put out. Later they 
avenged themselves by pilfering my cherries, 
The most mischievous enemies of the cherries, 
however, here as at the North, are the cedar wax- 
wings, or “cherry-birds.” How quickly they spy 
out the tree! Long before the cherry begins to 
turn, they are around, alert and cautious, In small 
