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Another visitor of whom the kingbird seemed suspicious was a purple crow blackbird, who every day passed over. This bird and the common crow were the only ones he drove away without waiting for them to alight; and if half that is told of them be true, he had reason to do so. With none of these intruders had the kingbird any quarrel when away from his nest.
It strikes the eye as more surprising than the flight of a pigeon, and swallow even, in that the effort put forth is so uniform and delicate as to escape observation, giving to the movement an air of buoyancy and perpetuity, the effluence of power rather than the conscious application of it. The calmness and dignity of this hawk, when attacked by crows or the kingbird, are well worth of him.
The genuine crow, the crow with the honest "caw," "caw," I have never caught in such small business, though the kingbird makes no discrimination between them, but accuses both alike. The halcyon or kingfisher is a good guide when you go to the woods.
In the timber fringes and the broad bottoms along the creek you get glimpses of the catbird feasting on the grapes and the wild plums; the brown thrasher and the woodthrush, wholly silent now; the little house wren who has lost her chatter; the vireos and the orioles, the wood pewee, the crested fly catcher and the kingbird. They all seem to be going southward.
The kingbird is sometimes called the "bee martin" because he occasionally snaps up the drones. All our insectivorous birds prey upon the flies; the swallows sweep them up in the air, the swifts scoop them in, while, besides the so-called flycatchers, the cedar-birds, the thrushes, the vireos, and all other soft-billed birds, subsist more or less upon them.
We have no lizard that destroys the bee; but our tree- toad, ambushed among the apple and cherry blossoms, snaps them up wholesale. Quick as lightning that subtle but clammy tongue darts forth, and the unsuspecting bee is gone. Virgil also accuses the titmouse and the woodpecker of preying upon the bees, and our kingbird has been charged with the like crime, but the latter devours only the drones.
Being an expert flyer, the kingbird had almost overtaken the fugitive, when suddenly the red-head wheeled to one side, flung himself somehow or other over a telegraph wire, turning at the same time and catching with his claws at the wire, where he clung, his body bent in an arc, holding his enemy at bay with his long, pointed beak and spiny tail.
This spasmodic visitation went on for days, and finally it was plain that sitting had begun. Still the birds of the vicinity were interested callers, and I began to think that one kingbird would not even protect his nest, far less justify his reputation by tyrannizing over the feathered world.
A kingbird came to the tree under which I sat, to see for himself the terrible bugaboo, and a robin or two, as usual, interested themselves in the affairs of a neighbor in trouble.
Bird-nesting in summer is wicked, cruel, and against the law. But bird-nesting in winter is good fun and harms no one, if we take only the little nests that are built in forked twigs, or on rock ledges. For most little birds prefer to make a new nest for themselves each season. If you get: A Goldfinch, floss nest; A Phoebe, moss nest; A Robin, mud nest; A Vireo, good nest; A Kingbird, rag nest;
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