CHIU) BIRDS OF OUR GARDENS 
189 
it up for awhile. But we had no notion of giving - it up for 
good. And a patient, still watch from the windows rewarded 
our efforts. We succeeded in catching a couple of the stubby¬ 
tailed, quaint little birds. 
There is a popular belief that the numerical s}^stem belongs 
to the human race alone. But we do know from unmistakable 
proofs that most birds count, in nesting time at least. Those 
parent warblers did not give up their search for the two we held, 
though the two they had secreted in a rose bush so thorny we 
couldn’t reach them, were fed every few minutes to keep up their 
spirits. We restored the babes after a visit to the photograph 
gallery, and there was the usual scene of family rejoicing. A 
Baby Yellow Warblers. 
fatted calf was served in the person of a plump garden spider 
who had mistaken the midday gloom of the garden corner for 
moonshine. 
In the matter of counting noses in nesting time, the towhees 
are an instance. Should two fall out of the nest, though in- 
stantl} r removed from the neighborhood, the parent birds keep 
up the search, in which quest all the birds of the garden take 
active and vocal part. And } r ou will recognize a child towhee 
at sight when } r ou have looked at his picture. The feet and 
legs are strong, but not so ludicrously large as the blackbird’s, 
and not so delicate as those of the yellow warbler, who perches 
in place of promenading. The child towhee knows full well 
that he was not born with a silver spoon in his mouth. The 
fates have decreed that he must scratch for a living. Like the 
