Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 49.djvu/359

Rh to take away for nest-building; sometimes it pulls hard, or they try to take too large a piece; then they will brace their feet, set their bodies, and tug with a vim; something has to give way, and very soon it is the sticky web; then away goes my yellowthroat, a happy conqueror.

The orioles are the next most frequent visitors. They peck fearlessly into the nest; so do the little flycatchers—the chebecs. The yellow warblers, robins, redstarts, and rose-breasted grosbeaks, and, of course, numerous English sparrows peck around the foliage near the nest and try a worm occasionally that has crawled from the nest, but they do not often trouble the nest itself.

Nature plans very beautifully for her creatures. Every bird has its food within reach of its own well-directed effort; but it remains for the bird to make the effort and secure the food. The structure of the bird's body—his beak, feet, feathers, length of neck—his manner of flight, his habits, and tastes, all are nicely planned for the little owner's daily quest for food.

A humming bird would not enjoy a sparrow's chubby beak, neither would the grosbeak find it easy to open pea pods or pick potato bugs with the humming bird's needlelike bill. The shore birds—the sandpipers and herons—would find it difficult to scale the trunk of a tree for their dinner, as do the nuthatches and woodpeckers, but their long, slender beaks deftly pierce the mud for snakes and worms, while the ducks find their large, flat beaks convenient for seizing and holding a frog.

The nocturnal birds, as the owls and whip-poor-wills, each possess interesting physical characteristics for securing their food

in the dark. When we have learned the tastes and habits of any bird, we shall see how perfectly he is equipped with an apparatus that would be an incumbrance to some neighbor bird, but to him is indispensable to life and comfort.

If we will study something of the birds—their structure, their