le. And that was just what he was planning to do! What a
struggle ensued! I would have wagered that the little gourmand had
reckoned without his host when he undertook to swallow that immense
worm. He twisted his neck this way and that, gulped and squeezed and
pried, until I feared he would burst his throat open. At length the
worm was partly bolted, but it seemed to stick fast, and the bird stood
there with his mandibles pressed far apart, the end of his dinner
bulging out of his mouth, and I felt uneasy for a time lest he should
choke to death before my very eyes. But, after resting a minute, he
gave his neck a number of convulsive twists, and at last succeeded in
forcing the unwilling worm down his throat, after which he wiped his
bill on the limb with a self-satisfied air and flitted away as happy as
a lark, knowing that his faithful craw would do the rest.

A slate-colored junco did a pretty thing in the woods one day of early
spring--much more pleasing to see than the incident just described. He
had rinsed his feathers in a pool of the little stream down in the
hollow, and now he was squatting flat on his belly on the ground in a
soft bed of brown leaves, preening and primping his plumes with his
little white, conical bill. Now he gave his quills a deft touch, now
the feathers of his wing, now those of his dainty breast. Lying there
in the sun he presented a perfect picture of feathery laziness. Many a
bird I have seen arranging his toilet after a bath while perching on a
limb or a twig, and even, as in the case of the brown creeper, while
clinging to the bole of a tree, but never before did I see one doing
this while lolling on the ground. He was not sick or hurt, simply
lazy; for when I went near him he flew away as chipper as a bird could
be.

The rambler not only sees many of these pretty bird ways, but he
sometimes has a hearty laugh at the birds' expense. During one of my
outings a blustering whirlwind started on the summit of a small hill
scantily covered with scrub oak. It seized the dead leaves and twirled
them about as if in a spasm of anger; then it went scurrying noisily
down the steep incline, flinging itself against a couple of large brush
heaps in the hollow where a number of fox and Harris sparrows were
concealed. They had imagined themselves safe in their brushy covert.
Suddenly the whirlwind struck their hiding place with a clang and
clatter, sending the birds in a wild panic in ev