Naturalist.

Alexandra Herald and Central Otago Gazette, Issue 412, 7 April 1904, Page 7

Naturalist.

BIBDS' ENEMIES. 3B[-df&® have one parasitical bird, the Ms/Sip, oow-bird, so called beoause it SJgJfeHiS walks about amid the grazing castle and seizes; the insects whioh their heavy tread sets going, which is an enemy of most of the smaller birds. It drops its egg in the nest of the song-sparrow, the social sparrow, the snow-bird, the vireos, and the wood-warblers, and as a rule it is the only egg in the nest that issues successfully. Either the eggs of the rightful owner of the nest are not hatched, or else the young are overridden and overreached by the parasite and perish prematurely. The young of the oow-bird is disproportionately large and aggressive, one might eay hoggish. When disturbed it will clasp the nest and scream and snap its beak threateningly. One hatched out in a song-sparrow's nest which was under my observation, and would soon have overriden and overborne the young sparrow which came out of the shell a few noars later, had I not interfered from time to time and lent the young sparrow a helping hand Every day I would viait the nest and take him out from under the pot-bellied interloper and placed him on top, so that presently he was able to hold his own against his enemy, Both birds became hedged and left the nest about the same time. Whether the raoe was an even one after that I know not. When the cow-bird finds two or more eggs in a nest in which it wisheß to deposit its own, it will remove one of them. I found a sparrow's nest with two sparrow's eggs and one cow-bird's egg, and another egg lying a foot or so below it on the ground, I replaced the ejected egg, and the next day found it again removed, and another cow-bird's egg in its place; I put it back the second time, when it was again ejected, or destroyed, for I failed to find it anywhere. Very alert and sensitive birds like the warblers often bury the strange egg beneath a second nest built on top of the old. Among the worst enemies of our birds are the so-called ' collectors,' men who plunder nests and murder their owners ia the name of science, In the majority of oases the motive is a mercenary one; the collector expects to sell these spoils of the groves and orchards. Bobbing neats and killing birds becomes a business with him. He goes about it systematically, and becomes an expert in circumventing and slaying our songsters. Every town of any considerable size is infested with one or more of these bird-highwaymen, and every nest in the country round about that the wretches can lay hands on ia harried. Their professional term for a nest of eggs is ' a clutch,' a word that well expresses the work of their grasping murderous fingers. They dutch and destroy in the germ the life and mueio of the woodlands. The various, natural hie. Tory journals are mainly organs of communication between these human weasels. They record, exploits at nest-robbing and bird-slaying in their columns. One collector tells with gusto how he 'worked his way' through an orchard, ransacking every tree, and leaving, as he believed, not one nest behind him. He had better not be caught working hie way through my orchard. Another gloats over the number of Connecticut warblers, aroze bird, he killed ia one season in Massachusetts. Another tells how a mockingbird appeared in southern New England and was hunted down by himself and friend,' its eggs ' clutched,* and the bird killed.—Century Magasine.. [.

The only way to have a friend is to be one.—What we learn with pleasure w«