nd
exposed to view. An hour later a half dozen or more jays were flinging
about in the peach tree above the feathers of their dead comrade,
screaming at the top of their voices, "juking" their bodies, as is
their wont when excited, and glaring at the disheveled plumes on the
ground. If it was a funeral service, it certainly was a demonstrative
one, and I do not believe that their grief and terror were affected.

A HANDSOME SCISSORSTAIL*

*Reprinted by permission from "American Ornithology," with important
additions.

In order to study the scissorstailed flycatcher (_Milvulus
forficatus_), of which some friends had told me again and again in a
glow of enthusiasm, I made a trip to southern Kansas and northern
Oklahoma. Several days passed before an individual of this species put
in appearance, as the scissorstails, which are migrants, had not yet
returned from their winter quarters in a more southern clime, and so I
had to wait for their arrival.

One day a friend and I were driving along a country road over the
prairie, when a quaint bird form went swinging from the wire fence by
the roadside toward a clump of willows in a shallow dip of the prairie.
Dashing after him, I heard a clear, musical call that proclaimed a bird
with which I had not yet become acquainted.

In a few moments he flew from the tree. My binocular was fixed upon
him as he went flitting across the field and presently alighted on the
ground. My surmise was correct; it was the scissorstail flycatcher,
one of the most unique and handsome birds belonging to our American
avifauna, one that merits more than a passing notice. To see him
perched on a fence, or swinging gracefully through the air, and hear
his bell-like calls and whistles makes you feel as if you were suddenly
transported to a foreign land, like Australia or Borneo, where so many
feathered curios are to be found.

In a fever of excitement I followed the bird, which presently flew back
to the fence by the roadside. He flitted from point to point as my
friend and I slowly pursued him, giving us an exhibition of his
scissoring process. Sometimes he would alight on a post, then on the
barbed wire, usually sitting flat on his breast. When open, the tail
is bicolored, the outer border all around being white and the inner
black. His general color is hoary ash, paler, almost white, below,
giving out a slight iridescence in the sunshine; his wings are
blackish, with white trimm