186 DAYS OUT OF DOORS. 



at the foot of a tall cedar, I found a few red feathers and 

 near them the body of the shrike. 



This plucky bird was greatly emaciated, and the legs 

 showed they had been injured months before. Crippled 

 as he was, he had wandered from his distant home, and, 

 under enormous disadvantage managed to provide for him- 

 self almost to the time of returning to his summer haunts 

 in the North, or, at least, to the cooler mountains. 



There are other carnivorous birds than hawks and 

 shrikes. Among the gentle songsters of our gardens we 

 see little, if any, evidence of their blood-thirsty propensi- 

 ties, and yet they all possess them to a greater or less de- 

 gree. Evidence of this can be had, particularly during 

 the nesting season, by watching patiently a single indi- 

 vidual or a pair of birds. When our small birds fight 

 among themselves or with other species death seldom re- 

 sults. Never does a sparrow, for instance, attack another 

 that it may feed upon it ; but are not all birds, however 

 gentle they may appear to us, nest-robbers at times? 

 Occasion offering, will not the great majority of even seed- 

 eating birds kill and at least attempt to devour newly 

 hatched birds ? This is a broad question — a sweeping in- 

 ference ; but I make it after years of endeavor to persuade 

 myself that it is not true. What bird can be less suggest- 

 ive of cruelty than the turtle-dove ! — yet I have seen a pair 

 of these birds attack and kill a whole brood of redstarts 

 that, leaving their nest too soon, rested upon a branch 

 close to the dove's nest. We all know how ready are 

 chickens to eat raw meat as well as young mice, birds, or 

 fish ; and quails, in early summer, will devour the eggs 

 and young of song-sparrows and bay-winged buntings. 

 Of this I have positive knowledge ; and even the nests of 

 larger birds are not safe. The late T. A. Conrad, the geol- 

 ogist, informed me that he once witnessed a long combat 

 between a quail and a brown thrush, the former having 



