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Updated: June 13, 2025
Beautiful swallow-tailed king-birds with rosy plumage perched on the tops of the small trees, and soared and flitted in graceful curves above them. Blackbirds of many kinds scuttled in flocks about the corrals and outbuildings around the ranches.
Then there is the never-failing crop of birds robins, goldfinches, king-birds, cedar-birds, hair-birds, orioles, starlings all nesting and breeding in its branches, and fitly described by Wilson Flagg as "Birds of the Garden and Orchard." Whether the pippin and sweetbough bear or not, the "punctual birds" can always be depended on.
Winter held on tenaciously and mercilessly, but it has let go. The great sun is high on his northern journey, and the vegetation, and the bird-singing, and the loud frog- chorus, the tree budding and blowing, are all upon us; and the glorious grass super-best of earth's garniture with its ever-satisfying green. The king-birds have come, and the corn-planter, the scolding bob-o-link.
The king-birds, with excited and defiant twittering, followed for a little its hidden retreat, and then returned elated to the nest. Among the kindred of the wild as well as among those of roof and hearth, events are apt to go in company. For day after day things will revolve in set fashion.
So irregular and haphazard, indeed, did it appear, that it might almost have been mistaken for a bunch of rubbish left in the tree from the time of freshet. But if the two king-birds relied on this resemblance as a concealment, they presumed as so clever a bird is not likely to do upon the blindness or stupidity of the wild kindred.
There were five eggs at the bottom of the smooth, warm cup, which formed the heart of the nest. They were a little smaller than a robin's egg, and of a soft creamy white, blotched irregularly with dull purplish maroon of varying tone. So jealous of these mottled marvels were the king-birds that not even the most harmless of visitors were allowed to look upon them.
King-birds are useful in protecting poultry and song birds from hawks, and are also great fly catchers, taking many beetles on the wing. Doves eat great quantities of seeds of harmful weeds. They also eat some grain, but almost altogether after the crop has been gathered.
Larks, blue-birds and king-birds followed the robins, and at last the full tide of May covered the world with luscious green. Harriet and Frank returned to school but I was too valuable to be spared.
A pair of king-birds built in his father's orchard, and it was desirable to get rid of them, because they destroy honey-bees. Isaac watched for an opportunity, and one day when the birds flew away in quest of food for their young, he transfixed them both at once with his arrow.
The first assault all but swept it from the tree, and it shrank back upon itself with flattened head and angry hiss. Then it struck fiercely, again and again, at its bewildering assailants. But swift as were its movements, those of the king-birds were swifter, and its fangs never hit upon so much as one harassing feather.
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