scissors-tailed flycatchers in North America, which have the genus
_Milvulus_ all to themselves. The other member of the genus is the
forked-tailed flycatcher (_Milvulus tyrannus_), a resident of tropical
America, migrating north normally as far as southern Mexico. He is a
sort of southern twin of our scissorstail.

The nests of the scissorstails are set in the crotches of trees in the
neighborhood of country homes on the prairie. Considering the size of
the birds, their nests are quite small, not so large as those of the
brown thrashers, though the cup is deeper and the architecture more
compact and elaborate. A friend describes a nest which he found on a
locust tree about sixteen feet from the ground. It was made mostly of
dry grass and locust blossoms, with here and there a piece of twine
braided into the structure. It had no special lining, but the grass
was more evenly woven on the inside of the cup than elsewhere.

From three to five eggs are deposited. The ground color is white,
either pure or creamy, sparingly mottled with rich madder-brown and
lilac-gray, the spots being thicker and larger on the larger end.
While the nest is undergoing examination, the owners circle and hover
overhead, much after the fashion of the red-winged blackbirds,
expressing their disapproval in loud and musical calls, and displaying
their rich scarlet decorations.

My descriptions have related only to the male bird, whose beautiful
forked tail is nine to ten inches long, and whose colors are clear and
more or less intense. His spouse resembles him, but is slightly
smaller, while her tail, though forked like her mate's, is from two and
a half to three inches shorter. The salmon and scarlet ornaments on
the sides, flanks, and axillars are paler than those of her lord, and
the scarlet spot shows very indistinctly on her occiput. The young of
both sexes don the dress of the mother bird during the first season,
save that they fail to adorn themselves with a scarlet gem on the crown.

Like all the members of the flycatcher group, the scissorstails capture
insects while on the wing, making many an attractive picture as they
perform their graceful and interesting evolutions in the air.

It was a year or two later that I saw a scissorstail performing his
ablutions in the northwestern part of Arkansas. How do you suppose he
went about it? Not in the way birds usually do, by squatting down in
the shallow water, twinkling their w