I judged, from the great chattering and chirping, that grave exceptions were taken to this remark, but quiet at length being restored, Mr. Towhee continued:
"My mate says it depends upon ourselves whether the whole tribe shall be exterminated. She, for one, does not intend to hatch out any more of Mrs. Cowbird's babies. This spring we found one of her speckled eggs in our nest, but it wasn't hatched out, I warrant you. We simply pierced the shell with our bills, picked it up by the opening, and carried it out of the nest."
A round of applause greeted these remarks, much to Mr. Towhee's gratification.
"It strikes me," said Mr. Indigo Bunting, "that the whole fault lies with our mates. From the size and different markings of Mrs. Cowbird's eggs they can always be distinguished from their own. No self-respecting bird should ever brood one; in that way we can exterminate the race."
"'Tis the mother-instinct, I presume," said Mr. Vireo, "or the kindly nature of some females, not to neglect a forlorn little egg abandoned by its parents at their very door. Ah," he broke off, pointing in a certain direction, "is not that a sad sight for an affectionate husband to see?"
On a fence near by stood two birds—a very small one, with a worried, harassed air, endeavoring upon tip-toe to drop into the mouth of the great fat baby towering above her a green caterpillar which she held in her bill.
"That is Mrs. Vireo, my mate, and her foster child," continued the speaker. "The egg of the cowbird being larger than her own, received all the warmth of her breast, so that her own little ones perished in the shell. It takes all her time and strength to feed that great hulking baby, who will accept her nursing long after he can take care of himself, then desert her to join his own tribe in the grain fields."
"Last year my mate had no better sense than to brood one of Mrs. Cowbird's eggs," said Mr. Chipping Sparrow. "It emerged from the shell first, of course, and in attending to its everlasting clamor for food she neglected her own birdlings so that all but one of them died. That one has always been a puny, weak little thing. We were greatly astonished, I assure you, at the size of our first offspring, neither of us being acquainted with the habits of Mrs. Cowbird, and disappointed that in neither feather nor feature it resembled her or me."
"I got the best of the lazy tribe, this year," chuckled Mr. Yellow Warbler. "Our nest was just completed, and my mate had deposited one egg, when in our absence one day Mrs. Cowbird sneaked in, laid one of her own beside it and then stealthily crept away. My mate said nothing, and might have brooded it with her own, but the next day the same thing, in our absence, occurred again; another female of the lazy tribe, I presume, finding our home quite to her liking."
"Two to one," said the Chat with a laugh, "that was not fair. Well, what did you do then?"