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Updated: June 22, 2025
She could see Bob Burns lying at length on the grass in the pasture over the fence, his heels waving in the air, his hands holding a string which formed a snare. It was like fishing to young Izaak Walton. It was very still and hot, and the cheep and trill of the gophers and the chatter of the kingbirds alone broke the silence.
Blackbirds and cuckoos flew over; orioles, both orchard and Baltimore, sang and foraged among the trees; song-sparrows and chippies trilled from the fence at one side: bluebird and thrasher searched the ground, and paid in music for the privilege; pewees and kingbirds made war upon insects; and from afar came the notes of redwing and meadow-lark.
This was satisfactory, for I did not know the kingbird in domestic life. For several days it seemed uncertain whether the kingbirds would ever really occupy the nest, so spasmodic was the work upon it.
Kingbirds are the knights-errant of the feathered tribes. They never attack another bird unless it is three times their own size; but when a few years older, the boy Hawthorne would probably have noticed that the kingbirds' powers of flight are so superior that all other birds are practically at their mercy.
With kingbirds on one side, pewees on the other, and the great crested fly-catcher a daily caller, this was eminently a fly-catcher grove, and the robin plainly felt that he was not responsible for its good order. Indeed, after fly-catcher households were set up, he had his hands full to maintain his right to be there at all. Whatever went on, the woodpeckers took no part in it.
Many birds came about, mocking-birds, crows, kingbirds, orchard orioles, and others. The mocking-birds ran down between the rows of vines catching grasshoppers, the crows did the same service, walking with dignity. The kingbirds chased flies, the orioles searched the fruit trees for insects. One and all were working in the interest of the strawberry grower.
The Marquis du Paty de l'Huitre may espouse the daughter and heiress of the Honourable James Bulger with all imaginable pomp, if he will. CA NE M'INTRIGUE POINT DU TOUT. I would rather stretch myself out on the grass and watch yonder pair of kingbirds carrying luscious flies to their young ones in the nest, or chasing away the marauding crow with shrill cries of anger.
The young kingbirds were sweet and chatty among themselves, and they decidedly approved the berries; but they never lost sight of each other, and kept close together, the little company of three, as I have seen other kingbirds do.
After trying in vain to elude them, he suddenly popped into a hole in the tree, and stuck out his long bill, as if defying them to enter. The kingbirds were completely outwitted; and, after making two or three angry darts at the hole in which their cunning enemy had taken refuge, they settled down on the branches close by to wait until he should show himself.
A warbler entered the tree, and after a while ventured upon the branch where the hummer was sitting. Instead of driving her away he took wing himself, and paid another visit to the apple-tree, a visit of perhaps five minutes, at the end of which he went back to the ash. Then two kingbirds happened to alight in the apple-tree.
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