rown mate
immediately says _Chuck!_ too, quite agreeing with her lord and master
that it is not best to waste their confidence upon _you_.

The centre of all their interest is the compact, tight basket woven of
wet grass-blades and split rush-leaves which is supported among the
reeds or rests on a tussock of wire-grass surrounded by water. It is a
model nest, and they understand so well the labor it cost that they are
mightily jealous of harm coming to it. The eggs are five in number, of a
faded blue tint, marbled, streaked and spotted with leather-color and
black, in shape rather elongated and pointed. The fledglings are abroad
about the first of June, when the parents proceed to the production of
another blood.

These blackbirds have the bump of domesticity largely developed, and if
their household is disturbed they make a terrible fuss, calling upon all
Nature to witness their sorrow and execrate the wretch that is violating
their privacy.

During all the spring season, and particularly while the young are being
provided for, the red-wings subsist almost exclusively on worms, grubs,
caterpillars and a great variety of such sluggish insects and their
voracious larvae as do great damage to the roots and early sprouts of
whatever the farmer plants, nor do they abandon this diet until the
ripening of the wild rice and maize in the fall. "For these vermin,"
says Wilson, "the starlings search with great diligence in the ground at
the roots of plants in orchards and meadows, as well as among buds,
leaves and blossoms; and from their known voracity the multitudes of
these insects which they destroy must be immense. Let me illustrate this
fact by a short computation: If we suppose each bird on an average to
devour fifty of these larvae in a day (a very moderate allowance), a
single pair in four months, the usual time such food is sought after,
will devour upward of 12,000. It is believed that not less than a
million pair of these birds are distributed over the whole extent of the
United States in summer, whose food, being nearly the same, would swell
the amount of vermin destroyed to 12,000,000,000. But the number of
young birds may be fairly estimated at double that of their parents; and
as these are constantly fed on larvae for three weeks, making only the
same allowance for them as for the older ones, their share would amount
to 42,000,000,000, making a grand total of 54,000,000,000 of noxious
insects destroyed in the s