Glendale, Mass.
1911
Aug. 26
[August 26, 1911]

  Calm, warm & sultry, the sun shining feebly through dense haze.

Cedar birds catching flying insects

  About 30 Cedar-birds spent the greater part of the day within
sight of our house catching flying insects. During most of the forenoon they
were clustered in the top of a dead oak whence they kept flying out
in every direction, nearly all of them being often on wing at once.
Through the afternoon they were in leafy ash trees on the roadside next
the lawn where I watched them for sometime rather closely. Through
my glass I could see the insects plainly enough. They appeared to
be rather larger than mosquitoes and to have a swifter and more erratic
flight although they did not move very rapidly. All that I could see
were confined to a space only a few yards square about on a level
with the tree tops and just to leeward of them. Within this space they
did not seem to be very numerous yet their numbers suffered no 
apparent diminution from the incessant raids of the of the cedar-birds among
them. From this I inferred that they kept coming from a distance about as
fast as they were gobbled up. The birds caught them with admirable