1 24 BY- WA YS AND BIRD-NO TES. 



in this hurried, almost frantic way. Yqu have 

 also sometimes made comic pictures when you 

 least intended such things ! Here is a bird's 

 bill and a quick firm curve for the back of its 

 head ; the rest of the sketch flew away with the 

 original. On the next page stands a fly-catcher, 

 on one leg, minus a wing and having only the 

 hint of a tail ; but you have preserved the 

 characteristic attitude, and the sketch is valua- 

 ble. You can work it up at your leisure. 

 Here is a pine-woodpecker, a pretty fair out- 

 line, but there is no sign of an eye in the bird's 

 head and its feet grasp thin air. All these 

 notes, however hurried and uncertain, are 

 reminders of what your eyes have seen, bring- 

 ing up at once vivid pictures of the gay wild 

 things which have flitted before you. 



Sometimes a bird will be exceedingly ac- 

 commodating. I recall now how one day I 

 crept, under cover of a tuft of wild sedge grass, 

 to within thirty feet of a log-cock (Hylotamus 

 pikatus), and worked out a most satisfactory 

 study, while it was quietly eating winged ants, 

 as they poured from a hole it had pecked in a 

 rotten stump. 



The yellow-billed cuckoo is a very difficult 

 bird to sketch, so shy and sly and so restless. 

 You will hear his queer, throbbing note in 

 some lone place, and you will slip along 

 hoping to see him. When you have nearly 

 reached the spot, lo, he has eluded you, and 

 his mournful voice caws out from deeper 

 shades further off among the tangled trees. 

 The wood-thrush and hermit-thrush are equally 

 evasive. By the way, Wilson claims that 

 the hermit-thrush is mute. I am sure this 

 is an error. One day while I lay in a cane- 



