Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 19, Number 87, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 July 1898 — QUARRELSOME BIRDS. [ARTICLE]

QUARRELSOME BIRDS.

The Missel Thrush la Cruel and Pittleaa. The robin, that “pious” bird, is veryquarrelsome, and it exasperates one to watch him wasting the precious hours in hunting another hungry robin down, and round and-round, till the sparrows have cleared the board, says the Contemporary Review. The blackbirds, too, are very annoying in the way that they snatch up a lump of bread and fly off with it, only to be chased about for the rest of the morning by other black-, birds, while a sparrow makes a square meal, off the morsel fallen meanwhile under a shrub. But, relentless as they are in pursuit, the curious fact is that they seldom fight. If the pursued turns, the pursuer stops, perks up his tail, and, being promptly charged by the other, becomes in turn the pursued. But woe to both w hen the missel thrush comes. He is pitiless in pursuit, and I have seen them pass my window time after time in the course of a morning, the storm cock hard on the “heels” of the blackbird. And when they overtake them what happens? For myself, I have often said before I believe the missel thrush a cannibal. At any rate, I attribute some of the dead blackbirds and thrushes that one finds about the ground® to his cruel beak. He watches for birds for hours at a time, like a bird of prey, and attacks like one. I have often stopped a chase which I knew could only end in oneway.