Fight For A Birdhouse

"One spring, " said a lover of birds. "there carne to a birdhnuse in my garden a pair of great creeted flycatchers. I had a doseii birdhouses scattereci arouud. This particular one was about a foot square, with a peaked roof and a chiruuey at each end, a doorway for the birds to go in and out and a couple of auger holes bored through the back to give the house light and air. "This birdhouse, the suminer bef ore, had been occupied by a pair of bluebirds, who had left their nest behind them. This nest the great crested flycatchers pulled apart and threw out of the house, every twig and straw. They oleaned the house out completely and then they brought in everything new and built a nest of Iheir own and settled down comfortably for the snmmer. "But in a ff sv days a pair of bluebirds caine along, and they made for this house. It might have been the same identical pair of bluebirds that occupied it the snmmer before. I don't know about tbat, though I have no doubt that robins and other birds that have been south for the winter, hundreds of miles away, do come back in the spring to the same places and to the same trees. Anyhow this pair of bluebirds vranted that birdhouse, and they were ready to flght for it, and that is what they did. The flycatcher is a nice little birct and a pretty plucky sort of a fighter, but uot a match for the bluebird. They had a grand round up inside the house, and finally the bluebirds pitched the flycatchers out, and later they pitched out every stick of furniture tbat the flycatchers had brought in, cleaned the house out entirely and then brought in fresh material and built a new nest accordii)g to their own ideas, and they settled down for the summer. "Well, a few days after that a pair of wrens came along, and they took a fancy to that particnlar birdhouse, too, and they sailed right in and tackled the bluebirds on the spot. Yon couldn't see the fight from the ground, but every now aud then you could see a straw or a feather shoot OTt of the front door of the house. The bluebird is a good, sound fighter, but the wren is a better one, and the upshot was that the wrena fairly put the bluebirds out and took possession of the birdhouse themselves. And then the wrens did just what the others had done. They pitched out every scrap of stuff in the birdhouse - just turnbled it out of the door, to fall on the ground - and then they brought in new stuff and built a nest for themselves. "Nobody molested the wrens. They staid there and raised their young there, and in the fall they all flew away and left the birdhouse again eerted for the winter. " -