served that the robin always had plenty of his own business to attend
to. I admire this beautiful bird, perhaps because he is the inveterate
enemy of the house sparrow, and almost the only one who actually keeps
that little bully in his proper place. There is to me something pleasing
in the bearing of the great-crest, who, though of few inches, carries
himself in a manner worthy of an eagle. Even the play of a pair of them
on the tops of the tallest dead trees in the woods, though merry enough
with loud joyful cries, has a certain dignity and circumspection about
it uncommon in so small a bird.

A pair of great-crests were frequent visitors to the fence, where they
were usually very quiet. But one day as the male flew over from the
woods, his call was answered by a loud-voiced canary, whose cage hung
all summer outside the kitchen door. The stranger alighted on a tree,
apparently astonished to be challenged, but he replied at once. The
canary, who was out of sight on the other side of the cottage, answered,
and the droll conversation was kept up for some time; the woods bird
turning his head this way and that, eager to see his social neighbor,
but unable, of course, to do so.

A little later in the season, when baby birds began to fly about, the
locust group became even more attractive. Its nearness to the woods, as
already mentioned, made it convenient for forest birds, and its
seclusion and supply of food were charms they could not resist. First of
the fledglings to appear were a family of crow blackbirds, four of them
with their parents. These are the least interesting feathered young
people I know, but the parents are among the most devoted. They keep
their little flock together, and work hard to fill their mouths. The low
cry is husky, but insistent, and they flutter their wings with great
energy, holding them out level with the back.

After berries began to ripen, the woodpeckers came to call on us. In my
walk in the woods in the morning, I frequently brought home a branch of
elder with two or three clusters of berries, which I hung in the small
dead tree. In that way I drew some of the woods birds about. The downy
woodpecker was one of my first callers. He came with a sharp
"chit-it-it," hung upon the clusters, occasionally head down, and picked
and ate as long as he liked. The vigilant robin would sometimes fly at
him, and he would leave; but in a moment back he came, and went on with
his repast. When the care