12 isH EAU DIU BOWN “BUDD Bettey 
food, but daintily and shyly pick up what falls on the ground. When putting 
out the mixed chicken feed I see that corn and other grains are liberally 
scattered where Bob can find it, and his clear whistle is my reward; but it 
does not convey the same impression to all persons. A young woman told 
me someone was trying to flirt with her and I found it was innocent bob- 
white. We do not neglect him in winter for Si is commissioned to leave 
grain in sheltered spots where the quail can find it, and they do. 
Whether an oriole or a catbird regards a delicious section of melon on 
the feeding table in early June as anything unusual, will forever remain a 
conjecture with us; but if actions speak, they regard it as something worth 
fighting for. The oriole is the only bird that has ever been a match for 
the aggressive and dictatorial redhead. When he swept swiftly and grandly 
from his special perch on a knot of an ash to the table, with his usual 
raucous and curt invitation to depart, the oriole, who was just dipping beak- 
fuls of the melon with relish, merely spread his orange and black tail, 
shook his wings menacingly, answered in a more polite but perfectly con- 
vincing way and went on eating melon. The astonished redhead flew at 
once to his perch and clung there, looking down at the table in evident 
surprise, as if it was all a mistake. 
Catbirds help pick the last shred of melon clinging to the shell, but 
eat longer at fruits with an acid flavor. They make the neatest cups of 
the half of an apple, however sour; and strawberries disappear like magic. 
All the birds will pick at a banana, after they have once tasted. These are 
merely tidbits for testing, and do not grace the banquet board after Nature 
provides berries and fruits. 
It is during the nesting season that the birds are the most constant 
visitors. If you will watch a robin intently eyeing the ground and collecting 
food, and remember what his own needs are supposed to be, then multiply 
that by three or four, a modest lunch table in a group of sassafras trees 
will appear like something sent by Providence. It is curious he will eat 
heartily of crackers and soaked bread, but I have never seen him touch 
any of the grain. Grackles, as I have intimated, refuse nothing and eat 
everything, and take as much as they can carry away. 
Providing bottle goods for the birds may be going too far, but the 
results have been, so entertaining—to both of us—that I am prepared to 
defend my proffered dissipations. Nor will I deny subterfuge and deceit 
practiced on the confiding birds. Why shouldn’t a common tiny homeopathic 
bottle be made to look like a flower, which it does when petals of red silk 
ribbon are sewed around the neck of it? Suspended by a thread several 
inches long from a twig, and filled to the brim by the best strained honey, 
what ruby-throated hummingbird would refuse to drink? Not one around 
the place. But it was a shock to find cut that these dainty creatures are 
just as selfish as all the other birds, and even fiercer fighters. One jab 
from their long sharp bills is all any bird wants to come up with, and they 
seem fearless. So, after clinging to the lip of the bottle and drinking 
deeply, the valiant hummer will sit on a near twig and guard his bottle 
from all intruders. 
Character is as distinctly discernible in the babies as in the parent 
