ffair indeed. The young bird opens his mouth a little, the
parent thrusts his--or her--beak down the waiting throat, until one
would think the infant must be choked, and then the elder delivers
little pokes, as he crams down the mouthfuls, six, eight, even ten I
have counted before he stops. Then the heads draw apart, and the
grown-up--who has plainly come well provided--makes a sort of
spasmodic movement in his own throat, probably raising from some
internal reservoir another portion of food, the infant opens his beak
again, and the operation is repeated.

[Illustration: TAKING BREAKFAST--THE GOLDEN-WINGED WOODPECKER]

[Sidenote: _TAKING HIMSELF TOO SERIOUSLY._]

Of course my presence interfered with this elaborate, several-course
breakfast, and the elder of the two fell to reproaching me by loud calls
and vehement bows in my direction. Seeing that I was not sufficiently
impressed, and did not depart, he resorted to stronger measures; he
swayed his head from side to side, stretching out his neck like an
enraged goose, and presenting a most droll appearance.

At first the youngster seemed to be paralyzed, but suddenly--perhaps
realizing what harm my inopportune appearance had done--he also began to
bow and sway, exactly as papa was doing. Anything more ludicrous than
those two birds standing face to face and performing such antics it is
hard to imagine; no one but a flicker could be at the same time so
serious and so absurd.

At the edge of the meadow, where it sloped sharply down to the marsh,
lived one whose days were full of trouble, which he took care to make
known to the world,--a

"Fire-winged blackbird, wearing on his shoulders
Red, gold-edged epaulets."

His little family, not yet out of the nest, was settled safely enough
behind a clump of bushes that fringed the marsh. But he, in his role of
protector, had taken possession of two trees on the high land, where he
could overlook the whole neighborhood, and see all the dangers, real and
fancied, that might, could, would, or should threaten them, and "borrow
trouble" to his heart's content. The trees, this bird's headquarters,
were an aged and half-dead cherry and a scraggy and wind-battered elm,
standing perhaps a hundred feet apart. On the top twig of one of these,
or flying across between them, he was most of the time to be seen, and
his various cries of distress, as well as his wild, woodsy song, came
plainly up to me in my window.

[Sidenote: _T