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Nothing can be more perfect and exquisite than the interior of one of these nests, yet a new one is built every season. Three broods, however, are frequently reared in it. The pewees, as a class, are the best architects we have. The kingbird builds a nest altogether admirable, using various soft cotton and woolen substances, and sparing neither time nor material to make it substantial and warm.

During the afternoon, as the boys sat on the piazza in front of the house, talking over the events of the morning, their attention was attracted by a combat that was going on between one of Frank's pet kingbirds and a red-headed woodpecker. The latter was flying zigzag through the air, and the kingbird was pecking him most unmercifully.

The curious antics of a solemn kingbird, who did not suspect his hidden observer, were droll to look upon. He seemed to be alone on the fence, though some silent spectator may have been hidden behind the leaves. He mounted suddenly straight up in the air, with cries, twenty feet or more, then soared down with a beautiful display of his plumage.

A kingbird chattered and shrieked overhead, the grasshoppers buzzed in the grasses, strange insects with ventriloquistic voices sang all about her she could not tell where. "Ma, can't I put on my clean dress?" insisted Sadie. "I don't care," said the brooding woman, darkly. "Leave me alone." Oh, if she could only lie here forever, escaping all pain and weariness!

The kingbird and the oriole worry her life out of her because her babies like eggs as who does not! In fact, there are, emphatically, two sides to the crow question, and I take the side of the crow. The "sweet June days" had passed, and bird nesting was nearly at an end. Woods and fields were bubbling over with young bird notes, and the pretty cradles on tree and shrub were empty and deserted.

They are less active and vigilant than the hawk; never poise themselves on the wing, never dive and gambol in the air, and never swoop down upon their prey; unlike the hawks also, they appear to have no enemies. The crow fights the hawk, and the kingbird and the crow blackbird fight the crow; but neither takes any notice of the buzzard.

They are not shy birds, but fly in a graceful, leisurely way from post to post along the fence as you walk or drive, sometimes sitting quietly to let you pass by. In this respect their habits are much like those of their cousin, the kingbird.

First to show himself was an orchard oriole, who was in the habit of passing over the yard every day and stopping an hour or more in the neighborhood, while he scrambled over the trees, varying his lunches with a rich and graceful song. Arrived this morning in the kingbird tree, he began his usual hunt over the top branch, when suddenly his eye fell upon the kingbird cradle.

It is by his persistence and audacity, not by any injury he is capable of dealing his great antagonist. The kingbird seldom more than dogs the hawk, keeping above and between his wings, and making a great ado; but my correspondent says he once "saw a kingbird riding on a hawk's back.

A swallow flew into the schoolhouse at this moment as if a kingbird were after it, and beat itself against the walls for a minute, and escaped again to the open air; but Captain Littlepage took no notice whatever of the flurry. "I had a valuable cargo of general merchandise from the London docks to Fort Churchill, a station of the old company on Hudson's Bay," said the captain earnestly.