Identifier: birdsnature161904chic (find matches)
Title: Birds and nature
Year: 1900 (1900s)
Authors:
Subjects: Birds Natural history
Publisher: Chicago, Ill. : A.W. Mumford, Publisher
Contributing Library: Smithsonian Institution Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Biodiversity Heritage Library

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oxed-in stair way.One sunny morning I unbolted and flungopen the door, and at once started backin amaze. Was the place inhabited bybats? A perfect swarm of brown wingsbeat against my head and face, but therewas a glint of delicate yellow to be seen,and also a bit of violet, as the frail creat-ures swept down into the sitting-roomand so on into the sunlight of the outsideworld. Evidently many of those blackcaterpillars searched for on that Septem-ber midnight, had escaped us andcrawled under the door leading to thisloft, where, unmolested, they had goneinto their chrysalis state and eventuallyhatched into these beautiful butterflies,wintering as such in a dormant condition,needing neither food nor drink. Awakening to greet the spring sun-shine, had some unknown instinct ledthem to the place through which theyhad crawled in their earlier existence?It seemed as if they were but waiting forthe opportunity which I now gave them,to go forth and reproduce their kind.Ellen Robertson Miller. ,
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THE KINGBIRD. (Tyrannus tyrannus.) Soft sits his brooding mate, her guardian he,Perchd on the top of some tall, neighbing tree;Thence, from the thicket to the concave skies,His watchful eye around unceasing flies. —Alexander Wilson Few of our common birds are betterknown than is the Kingbird. Few, too,if in reality there are any, are greaterfavorites with the people of our farmingcommunities. Bold and without fear inthe presence of other birds, the King-birds exhibit a tame and confiding spiritin the presence of man. Not infrequentlythey will nest in the trees and shrubberyof dooryards and orchards in quite closeproximity to dwellings. One observerspeaks of a pair which built their neston a sulky plow. Two little girls visitedthe site of the nest every day and the sit-ting bird would almost permit the chil-dren to put their hands on it before itwould leave the nest. They should notbe classed as quarrelsome birds, for theygenerally live in perfect harmony withother species of the sma

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