proper consistency; the while the youngster would sit near and
watch her with hungry eyes, and often scream in his coaxing way and
twinkle his wings, until she was ready to deliver up the tempting
fragment.

Once, after she had given him all she had brought, he still opened his
mouth and whimpered for more. At this exhibition of gluttony she lost
her patience. Would he never be satisfied, the great, greedy,
overgrown lubber? He was simply making a slave and a drudge of her.
She looked at him for a moment with a savage glitter in her dark eyes,
then began to peck him angrily right in the mouth, and drove him
peremptorily backward down the limb. Mother patience has its
limitations in the bird world as well as elsewhere.

On the same day a bank swallow was feeding her little ones, a half
dozen or so, which were ranged on a willow stem at the margin of the
river. Every time she flew toward them they set up a vigorous calling
to be fed. She procured her food by skimming airily over the river and
catching the insects that rose from its surface. Having nabbed one,
she would dart with it to her little family, and, without alighting,
and scarcely pausing in her swift flight, would thrust it into the
mouth of one of the birdkins. Thus she fed them one by one until she
had gone the round of the little circle, though sometimes, oddly
enough, she would serve the same infant twice in succession.

The little family, all perched in a row, looked very attractive, and I
was watching them closely most of the time. Suddenly the mother bird
disappeared, and was gone for several minutes. I forgot to keep my eye
steadily on the youngsters sitting six in a row, and, to my great
surprise, when she reappeared they had left their perch, which was in
plain sight, and I could not rediscover them for some time. Finally,
however, I espied them cuddling among some leafy twigs a few feet away,
where the mother resumed her duties of purveyor. My opinion is that
she had begun to feel uneasy for their safety in the exposed place
where I could see them so plainly, and so, while I was looking
elsewhere, had persuaded them to shift their position. Now they were
partly screened by the intervening leaves, and she felt that they were
secure.

There can be no doubt that birds have a language which the youngsters
soon come to understand, however simple and inarticulated it may be.
In a shady hollow, one day of early spring, a pair of tufted titm