SONGLESS BIRDS. Kingbird
Look at him as he sits motionless on the top wire of the fence, resting from an aerial excursion. He is easy to iden- tify, for his grays and blacks are so distinct and the clear white tail band is decisive. Suddenly he dashes into the air or sweeps above the ground and secures an insect with a sharp snap of the beak,—a drone bee, perhaps, although the bees that he captures are comparatively few,—and re- turns to the precise spot from which he started. This is a habit peculiar to the Flycatchers. I once watched a King- bird for nearly two hours, his point of vantage being a rail and wire fence between low meadows, and, though he would sail many hundred yards away, he always returned to his original perch. If a Crow or Hawk appears ever so far in the distance, he gives his shrill alarm note and goes in instant pursuit; and lucky is the chicken yard that has a pair of these gallant knights at hand and the garden that shelters them.
oes not seem, however, to care to cross swords with the Catbird, not, perhaps, that he is absolutely afraid, but he becomes suddenly near-sighted when that cunning musi- cian crosses his path. Dr. Abbott once tested the valour of a particularly saucy Kingbird, by sending up a red and yellow bird kite in the vicinity of its nest, pulling the kite backward as the bird advanced and then when he was close upon it slackening the string so that the Kingbird, unable to check itself, plunged through the paper and bolted 03, not returning for many hours, doubtless because his enemy was intangible, and not from fear.
Kingbirds make most devoted parents, and the young birds are delightful little things to watch as they develop if you are as fortunate in finding a nestful as was Mrs. Olive Thorne Miller, who has recorded their ways for all bird-lovers present and future in her “ Chronicle of Three Little Kings.” 1
Opinions differ as to the Kingbird’s bee-destroying pro- clivities, for which he received the name of Bee Martin; neighbouring farmers even tell different stories,——one hav- ing assured me that last year his hives were impoverished,
1 “ Little Brothers of the Air," p. 19. 183
