The same summer I became very well acquainted with a different set of bird-babies. They were still younger, for their feathers had a soft, downy look, and fluffed out so that they really looked larger than their tiny parents. They were silver gray, the little blue-gray gnat-catchers, and nothing could be more charming than the way they twinkled about the bushes, or turned somersaults in the air to catch flying insects on the wing. Their little songs, as low as whispers, their call-notes "like a banjo-string" ting! and even their low scoldings, were very pretty, and seemed to belong to them perfectly. Someone, who did not know birds very well called them little wrens, and they really had a good many of the restless movements and alert attitudes of these birds, but their habits are totally different. For instance, their life begins in a lichened cup high up among the top boughs and it is only in the late summer, when birds break their rules and go as they please for a brief holiday time before the migration, that you will see the gnat-catchers come down to the low bushes. I can hardly believe it myself, but I once saw a young one picking away on the ground.
One charm about the tiny birds, gnat-catchers, chebecks, vireos, kinglets, and the like, is that they are not usually so shy as large, handsome birds, and I have often had them almost within touch, singing, feeding, preening their feathers, in the loveliest and most confiding way.
WISH-TON-WISH.
EMMA M. GREENLEAF.
ONE bright May morning Wish-ton-wish sat on the mound in front of his family burrow. Wish-ton-wish was a lively young prairie-dog and he wanted to talk with someone.
Presently Madam Talky came out of her burrow and ran up to the top of her mound.
"Good-morning," called out Wish-ton-wish; but Madam Talky did not even turn her head his way. I dare say she thought to herself, "Humph! A chit of a fellow like that isn't worth my time."