“My! but what birds dem Mockers were. I kin just year ’em now.” And Matilda seated herself by the table, pushed back her glasses, and closed her eyes.

“Winter wa’n’t well ober ’fore dey began to sing up, and come peepin’ around de cabins and in de road bushes lookin’ fer a nest-place. Sometimes dey put it in de thick bush ober top de swamp, but more times dey put it close in de rose vines, like as if dey t’ought snakes wouldn’t likely git ’em dere, ’cause snakes is as set to git Mockers as de ole one in de garden ob Eden was bound ter git Ebe.

“Dat nest, hit was kinder throwed together ob sticks, but de beddin’ in hit was good an soft, for de Mockers knew mighty well whar ter find ole cotton fluff to make a linin’. An’, while all this was doin’, how dey did sing! Day wasn’t long ’nough fer him, ’cause ’long towards noon his froat hit git dry and he’d go way down de orange grove an’ rest him jest a li’l bit, and den come out again an’ git nearer and nearer to de cabin, an’ when de sun hit role away to bed an’ de moon-up come, he’d git from de rose vine to de roof, an’ den up to de chimley edge an’ sing straight down at yer. Laws, honey, yer couldn’t never tell in daylight what birds was singin’, de real ones or him a-mockin’ ob dem. De Red Bird with de topknot, de Blue Jay, de li’l Wren wif de sassy tail, de Hangnest (Oriole), or de Blue Sparrow might all be singin’, for all I know’d, or hit might be only he a-mockin’ of ’em better than dey knew how demselves.

“But when hit come night, and eb’ry one was home at de quarters, an’ some was singin’, an’ some playin’ de banjo, an’ de smell from de orange groves risin’ up powerful on de wind, and sun-down t’ree four hours gone, den when we heard all dem birds a-singin’, we knew it was de Mocker, an’ sometimes he wouldn’t stop all the night until de light hit slip right from silber to gold, an’ den copper, an’ ’twas sun-up again; an’ in dose days most eb’ry one had a Mocker in a cage. But here I be runnin’ on ’bout de times when de Lord he let folks an’ wild birds both be bought an’ sold. Tell me, honey, whar ye done git him? Shore he neber was flyin’ round about up yere in de cold an’ snow—him what lubs de sun-up ’way down Lou’siana way.”

“I didn’t put him in a cage, Aunt Tilda,” said Tommy, earnestly; “it is this way. He belonged to old Ned that works of summers for my Uncle Eph over at Bridgeton, and then goes home every year down South at Christmas, to spend the cold weather. This year he has hurt his leg, and is sick and can’t go, and has to stay in Bridgeton Hospital. So, as he used to know ‘the General,’ and he’s heard that Gray Lady loves birds, he told me to bring his Mocker over here, and ask her if she’d keep it safe and feed it until real warm spring weather, and then hang the cage outside, and open the door, and let it fly away if it would. ’Cause he thinks somehow it would find the way home if it wants to.

“He fed it well, and cared for it, and never thought about its being unhappy in a cage until he had to go to the hospital, and be shut in, and couldn’t go home South, perhaps, any more. Then I guess he knew how his Mocker might feel, too. I think Gray Lady will keep him, even though it says on the Bird Law posters that you mustn’t keep a wild bird dead or alive or have its nest or eggs. Because if Sheriff Blake arrested her, he knows old Ned and Gray Lady could explain it all so’s she wouldn’t be fined.”

“What is it that Gray Lady can explain so that she need not be fined?” said a voice from the store-room on the other side of the entry way, and “sheself” walked in; “sheself” being Matilda’s name for her mistress when she wished to use a term that she considered more dignified than the homely one of “Missy.”

Then Tommy repeated his explanation, while Matilda stood looking at the Mockingbird and muttering to herself of the many happenings of her slave days, happy as well as sad, that the sight of him recalled.

“Of course I will keep the Mockingbird until spring,” said Gray Lady, “and then I will hang the cage in the porch, open the door, but still keep it well supplied with food, so that he may come and go, and if his heart leads him back towards his southern birthplace, be sure that he will join the flock of some of his northern kindred and in their company reach home.”

“Do we have any kind of Mockingbird up here?” asked Tommy, his eyes opening in wonder.

“Not real brothers of the Mockingbird, though he has half a dozen in the southwestern part of the country, but two first cousins, and half a dozen second cousins. Let us take the Mocker up to the playroom and hang his cage in the warm window by the chimney, where the sun will shine on him whenever the clouds let it peep through. Then I will tell you all who his cousins are, and about three other American birds that for many years were caught and kept prisoners in cages and sold out of their native land.”

The children were all gathered upstairs by the time Gray Lady arrived, followed by Tommy, carrying the cage.

“I had a Robin in a cage, once, and a Catbird, and grandma and Aunt Mary always have Canaries. Why is it against the law to keep wild birds in cages? That Mockingbird doesn’t seem to mind it a bit; now that he’s smoothed down his feathers, and has begun to eat, he acts real happy,” said Eliza Clausen, after they had looked at the newcomer and heard the story of his being sent to Gray Lady.

“There are two reasons why wild birds should never be kept in cages except for really scientific study, or to help them when they are exposed to cold, or are ill and maimed in some way. The first reason is that when Nature placed birds in certain localities provided with the best sorts of beaks, feet, etc., to make them able to earn their living, it was done because there was work there for them to do that they could perform better than anything else. They were a part of the Great Plan for preventing insect life (which also has its uses) from increasing too much and doing damage. This is the practical way of considering birds for what the Wise Men call their ‘economic value.’ These birds may be able to hold their own against the birds of prey, that in the beginning were doubtless made to keep the smaller birds from becoming too numerous and upsetting the balance of the Plan, but when man came in, and not only destroyed them for some fancied damage to his crops, but took the young from the nest, or trapped the old birds, and sold them into captivity where they could no longer follow the creative law, to ‘increase and multiply,’ the danger became grave.

“The second reason, however, is one that our own kind hearts can understand the best, and that is the misery of the bird born wild when he feels himself a captive. If he outlives the first misery, and seems to become resigned, he may become content in a way, but he can never forget the liberty he has lost, nor can we, in any way, make up to him, by mere food and creature-comforts, the ecstasy of the wild life. The very fact that the healthful joy of flight and choice in mating is denied him is enough.

“This bird is one of the southern Sparrows, in size no larger than a Chippy. Its plumage is tropical in its beauty, deep blue head and neck, red underparts, glistening green back, green-and-red wings, with a reddish tail; in short, a glittering opal copied in feathers. Its cage was roomy, and it had the best of food, and fresh water for bathing and drinking, while the shelf in the window, on which it stood, was filled with flowering plants, up through the branches of which it could look. But, oh, the expression of that bird’s body! I watched its every motion; the head thrown backward, searching in vain for a loophole of escape between the bars, the quivering of its wings as the impulse for freedom, and the company of its kind, swept over it! Sometimes, late in the night, when I awoke and looked toward it, I could see that it was awake and its wings trembling with the thought of dawn that it could not fly to meet. Then I knew, even if it became cowed, and forgot its natural instincts so far as to be dumbly content as a prisoner, that the real life of the bird would be as dead as if a bullet had ended it, and though it was late winter, February, I felt that I must give it liberty.

“I told my father, and he sympathized with me as usual, listened to my story, and then, packing the cage safely, had it sent by special express to a family friend, who was wintering in Florida, with the request that she liberate the prisoner. For, as we could not get it to its winter haunt in the tropics, this seemed next best, and it would soon meet the flocks of its kin on the return trip.

“So the bird was freed, and once more felt the joy of being lifted on his wings whither he would go, and whatever loneliness he may have suffered after that, he had gained liberty, which is the right of the least of God’s creatures.

“Of the four American birds that were most commonly caged, the Mockingbird and Cardinal have always been the most popular, and this is what some of the writers have said about taking them into captivity.

“The Mockingbird, as you see, has sombre gray plumage like his cousin, the Catbird, that we all know so well that I think he should drop a name that belies his wonderful musical ability, and be called the ‘Northern Mockingbird.’ Even though the Mocker is caged, you can see the resemblance, in the way in which he twitches his tail, and first throws back his beak and then looks sideways, to our merry singer of the garden who often makes us think that half a dozen birds are perching in the drying-yard when he sits upon the top of a clothes-pole and lets his imagination float away with his voice.

“The Brown Thrasher, too, with the long, curved beak, brown back, and speckled breast, is also a first cousin and has the Mockingbird habit of mounting high up when he sings and looking straight up at the sky; while the Wrens, one and all, belong to this famous family group and come in, we may say, as second cousins, and like the Mockingbird, aside from the beauty of song, are very valuable insect eaters. The other three birds have the conical beak that stamps them as members of the family of Finches and Sparrows.

“Blue that is decided in tone, and not a bluish gray, is one of the rarest hues among the birds of temperate zones; for one may count the really blue birds of the eastern United States upon the fingers of one hand.

“This Bunting belongs to the tree-loving and tree-nesting part of his tribe, in company with the Grosbeaks, and the brilliant yellow American Goldfinch, whose black cap, wings, and tail-feathers only enhance his beauty. The Sparrows, of sober stripes, nest on or near the ground, and their plumage blends with brown grass, twigs, and the general earth-colouring, illustrating very directly the theory of colour protection, while the birds of brilliant plumage invariably keep more closely to the trees.

“In size the Indigo Bunting ranks with the small Sparrows, coming in grade between the Field- and the Song Sparrows, and being only slightly larger than the Chippy. The female wears a modification of the Sparrow garb, the upper parts being ashy brown without stripes, the underparts grayish white, washed and very faintly streaked with dull brown, the wings and tail-feathers having some darker edges and markings.

“When it comes to painting the plumage of the male in words, the task becomes difficult; for to use simply the term indigo-blue is as inadequate as to say that a bit of water that looks blue while in shadow, is of the same colour when it ripples out into full sunlight and catches a dozen reflections from foliage and sky. A merely technical description would read: Front of head and chin rich indigo-blue, growing lighter and greener on back and underparts; wings dusky brown, with blue edges to coverts; tail-feathers also blue edged; bill and feet dark; general shape rounded and canary-like, resembling the Goldfinch.

“The last of May one of these Buntings came to a low bush, outside my window, and, after resting awhile, for the night before had been stormy, dropped to the closely cut turf to feed upon the crumbs left where the hounds had been munching their biscuits. I have never seen a more beautiful specimen, and the contrast with the vivid grass seemed to develop the colour of malachite that ran along one edge of the feathers, shifting as the bird moved like the sheen of changeable silk.

“The nest, in no wise typical, is a loose and rather careless structure of grass, twigs, horsehairs, roots, or bits of bark placed in a low, scrubby tree or bush at no great distance from the ground, and the eggs are a very pale blue or bluish white, and only three or four in number.

“Being a seed-eater, it is undoubtedly this Bunting’s love of warmth that gives him so short a season with us: for he does not come to the New England states until the first week in May, and, after the August moult, when he dons the sober clothing of his mate, he begins to work southward by the middle of September,—those from the most northerly portions of the breeding range, which extends northward to Minnesota and Nova Scotia, having passed by the tenth of October. He winters in Central America and southward.

“Although of the insect-eating fraternity of the conical beak, the Indigo Bunting consumes many noxious insects in the nesting season, when the rapid growth of the young demands animal food, no matter to what race they belong. Being an inhabitant of the overgrown edges of old pastures, or the brushy fences of clearings and pent roads, he is in a position where he can do a great deal of good. Mr. Forbush, in his valuable book on Useful Birds and Their Protection, credits the Indigo Bunting with being a consumer of the larvæ of the mischievous brown-tail moth; but whatever service it may do as an insect destroyer, its service the year through as a consumer of weed seeds, in common with the rest of its tribe, is beyond dispute.

“The voice of the Indigo Bunting is pretty rather than impressive, and varies much in individuals. It consists of a series of hurried, canary-like notes repeated constantly and rising in key, but, to my mind, never reaching the dignity of being called impressive song.

“Nuttall, one of the early American Wise Men, writes that, though usually shy, the Indigo-bird, during the season, is more frequently seen near habitations than in remote thickets: ‘Their favourite resort is the garden, where, from the topmost branch of some tall tree that commands the whole wide landscape, the male regularly pours out his lively chant and continues it for a considerable length of time. Nor is this song confined to the cool and animating dawn of morning, but it is renewed, and still more vigorous, during the noonday heat of summer. This lively strain is composed of a repetition of short notes, which, commencing loud and rapid, and then slowly falling, descend almost to a whisper, succeeded by a silence of almost half a minute, when the song is again continued as before.

“ ‘In the village of Cambridge (Massachusetts), I have seen one of these azure, almost celestial musicians, regularly chant to the inmates of a tall dwelling-house from the summit of the chimney or the tall fork of the lightning-rod. I have also heard a Canary repeat and imitate the low lisping trill of the Indigo-bird, whose warble, indeed, often resembles that of this species.’

“This combination of musical ability, lovely plumage, and its seed-eating qualities long since has made the Indigo Bunting in danger of extermination, through the fact of its being universally, throughout the South, captured and sold as a cage-bird, both for home use and for export. In that section the bird is called the ‘blue pop,’ a corruption of ‘bleu pape,’ or ‘pope,’ of the French.

“If the Mocker suffered for his voice, the Cardinal was made a prisoner for his song and gorgeous colour combined, and though, as is bird law in such cases, the female is dull in colour, she has a very attractive song also, even in confinement. But I hope that these prison days are over. Whoever now confines the Cardinal is a law-breaker as well as a heart-breaker, and yet, but ten years ago, every bird-store window was aglow with the colour of the Cardinal’s mantle. I have here in the scrap-book a charming story that you will like to hear, of a Cardinal in Boston, made a temporary captive for its own preservation, and of its release when the right time came.”

THE CARDINAL AT THE HUB

His range being southern, Cardinal Grosbeak seldom travels through New England; and, to my knowledge, has never established a home and reared a family north of Connecticut until in the instance here recorded. Kentuckians claim him, and with some show of right, since James Lane Allen built his monument in imperishable prose. But, soon or late, all notables come to Boston, and among them may now be registered the “Kentucky Cardinal.”

Shy by nature, conspicuous in plumage, he shuns publicity; and avoiding the main lines of travel, he puts up at a quiet country house in a Boston suburb—Brookline.

Here, one October day in 1897, among the migrants stopping at this halfway house, appeared a distinguished guest, clad in red, with a black mask, a light red bill, and a striking crest; with him a bird so like him that they might have been called the two Dromios. After a few days the double passed on, and left our hero the only red-coat in the field. A White-throated Sparrow now arrived from the mountains, and a Damon-and-Pythias friendship sprang up between the birds. Having decided to winter at the North, they took lodgings in a spruce tree, and came regularly to the table d’hôte on the porch. My lord Cardinal, being the more distinguished guest, met with particular favour, and soon became welcome at the homes of the neighbourhood. With truly catholic taste, he refused creature-comforts from none, but showed preference for his first abode.

It was March 5, 1898, when we kept our first appointment with the Cardinal. A light snow had fallen during the night, and the air was keen, without premonition of spring. It was a day for home-keeping birds, the earth larder being closed. The most delicate tact was required in presenting strangers. A loud, clear summons—the Cardinal’s own whistle echoed by human lips—soon brought a response. Into the syringa bush near the porch flew, with a whir and a sharp tsip, a bird. How gorgeous he looked in the snow-laden shrub! For an instant the syringa blossoms loaded the air with fragrance as a dream of summer floated by. Then a call to the porch was met by several sallies and quick retreats, while the wary bird studied the newcomers. Reassuring tones from his gentle hostess, accompanied by the rattle of nuts and seeds, at last prevailed, and the Cardinal flew to the railing, and looked us over with keen, inquiring eye. Convinced that no hostilities were intended, he gave a long, trustful look into the face of his benefactress and flew to her feet.

A gray squirrel, frisking by, stopped at the lunch-counter and seized an “Educator” cracker.

The novel sensation of an uncaged bird within touch, where one might notice the lovely shading of his plumage as one notes a flower, was memorable; but a sweeter surprise was in store. As we left the house, having made obeisance to his eminence, the Cardinal, the bird flew into a spruce tree and saluted us with a melodious “Mizpah.” Then, as if reading the longing of our hearts, he opened his bright bill, and a song came forth such as never before enraptured the air of a New England March,—a song so copious, so free, so full of heavenly hope, that it seemed as if forever obliterated were the “tragic memories of his race.”

As March advanced, several changes in the Cardinal were noted by his ever-watchful friends. He made longer trips abroad, returning tired and hungry. The restlessness of the unsatisfied heart was plainly his. His long, sweet, interpolating whistle, variously rendering “Peace . . . peace . . . peace!” “Three cheers, three cheers,” etc., to these sympathetic northern ears became “Louise, Louise, Louise!” Thenceforth he was Louis, the Cardinal, calling for his mate.

On March 26, a kind friend took pity on the lonely bachelor, and a caged bird, “Louise,” was introduced to him. In the lovely dove-coloured bird, with faint washings of red, and the family mask and crest, the Cardinal at once recognized his kind. His joy was unbounded, and the acquaintance progressed rapidly, a mutual understanding being plainly reached during the seventeen days of cage courtship. Louis brought food to Louise, and they had all things in common, except liberty.

April 12, in the early morning, the cage was taken out-of-doors, and Louise was set free. She was quick to embrace her chance, and flew into the neighbouring shrubbery. For six days she revelled in her new-found freedom, Louis, meanwhile, coming and going as of old, and often carrying away seeds from the house to share with his mate.

April 16, he lured her into the house, and after that they came often for food, flying fearlessly in at the window, and delighting their friends with their songs and charming ways. Louis invariably gave the choicest morsels to his mate, and the course of true love seemed to cross the adage; but, alas! Death was already adjusting an arrow for that shining mark.

April 25, Louise stayed in the house all day, going out at nightfall. Again the following day she remained indoors, Louis feeding her; but her excellent appetite disarmed suspicion, and it was thought that she had taken refuge from the cold and rain, especially as she spent the night within. The third morning, April 27, she died. An examination of her body showed three dreadful wounds.

Louis came twittering to the window, but was not let in until a day or two later, when a new bird, “Louisa,” had been put in the cage. When he saw the familiar form, he evidently thought his lost love restored, for he burst into glorious song; but, soon discovering his mistake, he stopped short in his hallelujahs, and walked around the cage inspecting the occupant.

Louisa’s admiration for the Cardinal was marked; but for some days he took little notice of her, and his friends began to fear that their second attempt at match-making would prove a failure. April 30, however, some responsive interest was shown, and the next day Louis brought to the cage a brown bug, half an inch long, and gave Louisa his first meat-offering.

The second wooing progressed rapidly, and May 7, when Louisa was set free, the pair flew away together with unrestrained delight. After three days of liberty, Louisa flew back to the house with her mate, and thenceforth was a frequent visitor.

May 21, Louisa was seen carrying straws, and on June 6 her nest was discovered low down in a dense evergreen thorn. Four speckled eggs lay in the nest. These were hatched June 9, the parent birds, meantime and afterward, going regularly to market, and keeping up social relations with their friends.

In nine days after their exit from the shell, the little Cardinals left the nest and faced life’s sterner realities. A black cat was their worst foe, and more than once, during their youth, Louis flew to his devoted commissary and made known his anxiety. Each time, on following him to the nest, she found the black prowler, or one of his kind, watching for prey. On June 28, the black cat outwitted the allied forces, Señor Cardinal and his friends, and a little one was slain. The other three grew up, and enjoyed all the privileges of their parents, flying in at the window, and frequenting the bountiful porch.

July 25, Louisa disappeared from the scene, presumably on a southern trip, leaving the Cardinal sole protector, provider, and peacemaker for their lively and quarrelsome triplet. A fight is apparently as needful for the development of a young Cardinal as of an English schoolboy, possibly due in both cases to a meat diet.

Overfeeding was but temporary with our birds. On the 8th of August the migratory instinct prevailed over ease, indulgence, friendship, and the Cardinal with his brood left the house, where he had been so well entertained, to return no more. No more? Who shall say of any novel that it can have no sequel? Massachusetts may yet become the permanent home of the Kentucky Cardinal, the descendant to the third and fourth generation of Louis and his mate.

—Ella Gilbert Ives, in Bird-Lore.

As Gray Lady read the story of the Cardinal, the children, between listening to it and being intent on their work, forgot the Mockingbird in the window, upon whom the rays of the sun, that had gradually managed to pierce the clouds, were resting.

IN CAPTIVITY

It was very still for a moment, and something fell on Sarah Barnes’ work that was bright, but it wasn’t a needle! Then, looking across at the cage, but addressing Gray Lady, she said, “We’ve paid for the shingles, and the hay, and the horse-blanket, and a chest-protector, besides, for the horse to wear all the time, to keep the uphill wind off his lungs. We’ve bought the bags of sweepings for the feeding-places, and there’s three dollars and eighty-five cents left.

Gray Lady said that, as all the members were present, a special meeting would be in order; and two days later the Mockingbird started for the southern home of one of Gray Lady’s school friends, with a “special” tag on his well-wrapped cage and a bottle of extra food fastened outside.

Oh, the untold misery and waste of this caging and selling of free-born birds! It is only one grade less direct a slaughter than killing them to trim a bonnet. While the sufferings of the bonnet-bird end at once, with its life, those of the caged bird have only begun as the door closes behind him.

A few exceptional cases, where birds in care of those who are both able and willing to make their surroundings endurable, count as nothing against the general condemnation of the practice of caging birds born wild.

Those of us who have known, by experience, in caring for wounded or sick birds, exactly what incessant watchfulness is necessary to keep them alive, realize how impossible it is that this care should be given them by the average purchaser.

Birds born and reared in captivity, like the Canary, are the only ones that real humanity should keep behind bars. There is no more condemnable habit than taking nestlings of any kind, and trying to rear them, unless disaster overtakes the parents.

Nominally, the traffic in caged wild birds has ceased; actually, it has not; nor will it until every bird-lover feels himself responsible for staying the hand that would rob the nest, whether it is that of the ignorant little pickaninny of the South, who climbs up the vine outside the window where you are wintering, and sees, in the four young Mockers, in the nest just under the sill, a prospective dollar; the child at home, who likes to experiment for a few days with pets, and then forgets them; or the wily dealer, who sells secretly what he dares not exhibit. No quarter to any class who make prisoners of the wild, outside of the zoölogical gardens or the few private outdoor aviaries, where the proper conditions exist.

Any free citizen prefers death to loss of liberty, and even the most material mind will, at least, allow this human quality to Citizen Bird, while it proves that he or she who either cages or buys the captive wholly lacks the spiritual quality.

Should we make prisoners of

WINTER COMRADES

These were the hard days for birds and people both, days of sleet and ice, when the snow seemed to chill and bind the trees down, instead of winding lovely draperies about them as it did at first.

Toward the end of January the cedar-berries gave out, and the juicy blackberries of the honeysuckle, that clings to everything that will hold the vines, became watery and poor; most of the seed-stalks of weeds were beaten down, and it was “mighty poor picking for birds,” as Sarah Barnes expressed the matter.

The lunch-counter in Birdland received a fresh supply of food every morning, and yet, sometimes before dark, every grain had been eaten, and the generous lumps of suet picked to shreds. The feeding-stations for the game-birds all had visitors, and the boys, who kept them supplied, saw, in their walks, many winter birds that they never before knew came so near to the cultivated farmland.

Acting on the general idea of feeding and sheltering birds that now seemed to pervade the air of Fair Meadows township, many people scattered food on the roofs of their sheds, and made openings in their corn-stacks, or left a window of the hay-barn ajar, where birds might seek a shelter.

All through the month the resident winter birds were seen at intervals. Of course, there would be many days when no birds would appear, and it would seem as if they had all gone, but let the sun shine, and the least breath of wind blow from the southeast, and they would come out of the near-by shelter where they had been hiding.

The orchard lunch-counter was the one place where, at least, a single bird was always to be found, and, at times, as many as half a dozen different kinds would be seen feeding peaceably together.

Gray Lady kept a list of all the birds that the children reported, and sometimes it was quite a puzzle for her to name a bird, unknown to the discoverer, from the description that was brought of it. For to see the chief points of a bird at a glance is difficult enough in itself, but to put them into exact words seemed sometimes impossible.

But when Bobbie, who went to the same location, reported that he had seen “a flock of birds that were sort of Sparrows with a yellow breast, and a black mark on it, and long ears,” it took a little time and many questions before she found that the birds were visiting Horned Larks, with pinkish brown backs, a black crescent on the breast, and a black bar across the forehead, that, extending around the sides of the head, forms two little tufts, or feather horns. For the rest, the throat and neck were dull yellow, and the underparts white streaked with black. These birds were little known. They only made flying visits, and gave merely a call-note, keeping their beautiful song, during which they soar in the air like the Sky-lark, for their nesting-haunts in the far North.

Gray Lady’s ingenuity was taxed to its utmost, however, when one Saturday morning little Clary came to the playroom, her face aglow, and said that she had seen “a brown Blue Jay with a yellow tail and red wings; not just one, but a whole family.”

For a moment Gray Lady was quite at a loss how to proceed; yellow tail and red wings were surely startling; then she saw that there must be some point about the bird that reminded the child of a Jay other than its colour.

“How did this bird look like a Jay, Clary?” she asked.

“In the head,” came the prompt reply; “it had feathers on top that moved up and down, the way a Jay’s does, and it was dark in the nose.”

On thinking over the winter birds that had a crest of feathers that could be raised or lowered, she realized that the Cedar-bird had such a one, also a black beak, and a black eye-stripe that made it look “dark in the nose,” but yellow tail and red wings it certainly did not have, merely a narrow yellow band on the tail and small, waxen, coral-red tips to some of the wing quills. However, taking half a dozen coloured pictures from one of the portfolios that she kept at hand to settle disputed points, she spread them in front of the little girl, who, without a moment’s hesitation, picked out the Cedar-bird, or Cedar Waxwing, as it is properly called from its coral wings-tips.

These are the resident birds on the list that Gray Lady kept of those the children saw during that winter:—