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which frequents swampy thickets, the Black and White Creeping 
Warbler, and the Oven Bird, so called from the curious nest, 
with an arched top, which it builds on the ground, and which is 
supposed to resemble an old-fashioned oven. 
Of the Thrushes, besides several other species sometimes met 
with, we have that general favorite, the Robin, which is, as we all 
know, very abundant on the lawns. We are all familiar with its 
liking for earth worms, but it is probably not known to everyone 
what an extraordinary number it eats. Professor Treadwell of 
Cambridge, found that a young Robin he kept in a cage for 
some time seemed to languish, and did not begin to increase in 
weight until it was provided with sixty-eight worms daily. On 
the day when it first eat this number, the bird weighed twenty- 
four pennyweights before his meal. The weight of the worms 
was thirty-four pennyweights, so that in twelve hours it eat 
forty-one per cent, more than its own weight. 
Of the family of the Vireos, among the very best of our singers, 
birds which are found in the tree tops and build very beautiful 
nests, we have the well-known Red-eyed Vireo, the White-eyed 
Vireo and the Warbling Vireo, and other species may perhaps 
occur. Both kinds of Cuckoo, common to eastern North Amer¬ 
ica, are found here in summer and breed—though not abundantly. 
There is one bird which is common here that always lays its eggs 
in the nests of its neighbors. This is the Cow-blackbird or Cow¬ 
bunting. 
Among the best known of our summer birds are the Swallows. 
We have the Barn Swallow, the White-bellied Swallow, the 
Bank Swallow, the Clift' Swallow and the Purple Martin. All 
of these varieties, including the so-called Chimney Swallow, may 
be seen at almost any time in summer—hovering over the marsh 
back of the beach, where there is an ample supply of their insect 
food, the White-bellied being perhaps the most abundant and the 
Purple Martin floating high in the air above them all. 
The very remarkable family of the Humming Birds is peculiar 
to America, the West Indies and neighboring islands, and com¬ 
prises nearly four hundred species, though of that number hardly 
more than a dozen are at present known to occur north of 
Mexico. Several of them are very limited in their range, some 
being confined to particular islands and others to the tops of certain 
