Rensselaer Union, Volume 5, Number 28, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 April 1873 — Birds Acquiring New and Brutal Habits. [ARTICLE]

Birds Acquiring New and Brutal Habits.

Prop. Samuel Lockwood gives an investing account of that beautiful bird »nown as the golden robin, or Baltimore” oriole, in connection with the common bumble bees. Last June largo numbers of these bees were found under the liorseehestnut trees, then in full bloom, in the campus of Rutgers College, every one of them decapitated, and the heads lying around with the "bodies; and it further appears that every one of the headless bees was a stingless male. The Professor worked out the case with much patient perseverance, and fouud to his surprise that this wholesale slaughter was the work of four orioles. Another fact which astonished him was, that the bodies of these insects were empty, the viscera having been drawn out at the ring-like opening where the head had been neatly snipped by the birds. The process was to catch the bees while hovering at the ball-like opening of the flowers. After severing the head, they extracted the viscera for the sake of thehbney-sac. Several very interesting considerations are brought out in the course of the article—such as the acquired taste; the birds had found out that honey was nice. Was it not singular, too, that they bad learned that it could be got in such a manner? And there was also the curious fact that the bird confined its marauding to tho white-headed bees, the stingless males—thus carrying on his terrible -work with impunity, aud almost! wantonness, as it contented itself with simply the honey-bearing ’ sac. Prof. Lockwood also notes a curious change of habit in tho king-bird. Speaking of the wonderfully plucky manner of this courageous little bird in attacking 9 and other large birds, as securing t#6 general admiration, he says that for himself that admiration has gone down to zero, as he has noticed that the bird has not any true knightly qualities, but can do some very mean things. The Professor then instances a case in which a pair of robins had built a nest in a tree so near by that the process could be watched from tbehouse. A pairof kingbirds kept all the time near, and watched progress with genuine royal indolence/ and, when all was finished, impudence took possession*. Tkcnghtful owners made but a feeble effort to resist this invasion. _ The .king-birds retained possession until their'yonng were raised. Morc than a year ago, Prof. Lockwood likewise called attention to the fact that the great batcher-bird, or northern shrike, Contrary to all precedent, hid begun to visit in winter the cities where the European sparrows have become naturalized. The bird in summer collects grasshoppers, small lizards, etc., and impales them on the spines of the locust or other tteeS, jesting them at its leisure. He noices the I case in which a shrike in its ■ winter visit gibbeted a sparrow in the city by putting its neck in the erdteh of a small branch of a larch, Rndthon, having knockedin the top of its head, the bird extracted its victim’s brains.