46 Birds Every Child Should Know 
comes to visit me at least ten times every day, 
can scarcely wait for the milk to be poured into 
the dog’s bowl before he has flown to the brim 
for the first drink. Once, in his eagerness, he 
alighted on the pitcher in my hand. He has 
a pretty trick of flying to the sun dial as if he 
wished to learn the time of day. From this 
point of vantage, he will sail off suddenly, like a 
flycatcher, to seize an insect on the wing. He 
has a keen appetite for so many pests of the 
garden and orchard — moths, grasshoppers, 
beetles, caterpillars, spiders, flies and other in- 
sects — that his friendship, you see, is well worth 
cultivating. Five catbirds, whose diet was care- 
fully watched by scientific men in Washington, 
ate thirty grasshoppers each for one meal. 
Yet how many people ignorantly abuse the 
catbird! Because he has the good taste to like 
strawberries and cherries as well as we do, is he 
to be condemned on that account? If he kills 
insects for us every waking hour from April to 
October, don’t you think he is entitled to a 
little fruit in June? The ox that treadeth out 
the corn is not to be muzzled, so that he cannot 
have a taste of it, you remember. A good way 
to protect our strawberry patches and cherry 
trees from catbirds, mockingbirds, and robins, 
is to provide fruit that they like much better — 
the red mulberry. Nothing attracts so many 
birds to a place. A mulberry tree in the chicken 
