attention was attracted from heavenly things by the very 
pronounced squeaking of a mouse which was not far away. 
I took a quick look around and could hardly believe my eyes, 
for there, under the hermosa rose, was a young speckle- 
breasted robin, and in his beak was a tiny, struggling, gray 
mouse. The robin, just as I have seen a house wren beat a — 
grasshopper to insensibility, was whacking the mouse on the 
eround with all his might. 3 called my husband and we both 
saw the end of the mouse.’ 
Perhaps the robins will yet sare how to outwit che 
English sparrow who has an appetite for earthworms which 
his own short bill cannot supply. A pair of these city 
_ vagrants will sometimes do team work against a robin, when 
he is extracting his food from the ground. Back of him on 
each side will stand one of the little foreigners, and as robin 
pulls up his breakfast, it will rush forward after the wrig- — 
- gler; then, as the robin throws his head in the opposite 
direction, the partner standing there deftly takes the tidbit 
out of the very mouth of the pestered bird. 
This same little feathered nuisance is sometimes too 
lazy to hunt for material to make his own careless nest and 
will steal the very foundation of a robin’s house. A friend 
called my attention to a House Sparrow that showed by its © 
furtive actions that it knew it was a thief. It sneaked 
around the corner of a school building the instant the right- _ 
ful owners left their collection and helped itself to all that it 
could carry. and slipped away before the robins returned eS 
with other carefully selected loads. He was able to work > 
this trick several times before he was oie: and soundly | 
thrashed for his meanness. 
The Northwestern United States has hos especially 
favored in the number of kinds of the thrush family to be 
found in this section, for there are nine other varieties in 
these states. Ornithologists, the wise people who know all 
about the inside as well as the outside of birds, place the 
ce 
