LANDLORD TO THE BIRDS 17 



one nicker, two or three years ago, taking great 

 delight in dramming on the under side of the tin for 

 fifteen minutes at a time, like a small boy with an 

 old dishpan. Sometimes he made so much noise 

 it was a nuisance. Almost invariably when you 

 start up a flicker it is from the ground. I used to 

 come on them over and over in the middle of the 

 lawn, and was not surprised when I found that the 

 investigations of flickers' crops and stomachs showed 

 they live very largely upon ants. Any one who has 

 been troubled by ant-hills in a lawn (and who has 

 not?) will be glad to learn that the government 

 bureau found as many as five thousand ants in a 

 single stomach, and that nickers, when natural 

 holes are not available, will take readily to artificial 

 boxes. 



Bluebirds, too, will readily nest in boxes, and if 

 you had sat as I did one day, quietly in the orchard, 

 and watched a single bluebird alternating song with 

 caterpillar-eating — a caterpillar, then a bit of mel- 

 ody, then another caterpillar, and another bit of 

 melody, and so on, unceasingly, for two hours — you 

 would still further rejoice in the presence of this 

 beloved messenger of spring. The king-bird, too, is 

 an orchard nester. He bears the unpleasant techni- 

 cal name of Tyrannus tyr annus, but none that I have 

 observed merited even one of these terms, let alone 

 the double dose. It is the characteristic of a tyrant 

 to oppress everybody, especially the weak, but the 

 king-birds reserve their pugnacity for birds larger 

 and stronger than themselves— namely, the hawks 

 and crows. I well remember, in my boyhood, a 

 pair of king-birds which nested in our orchard, at a 



