The flight of the yellow-hammer is wavy and graceful, and, alighting abruptly, he has a curious way of jerking out his tail feathers like a little fan. All at once a whole flock of them will descend from a considerable height and settle on the twigs of a tree, clothing it as with living leaves. Whatever number the flock may consist of, there is no impatient hurry or jostling among them to get the best perch, every individual settling as if on its own appointed place. As I have already observed, nothing is more charming at this season than these congregated companies of small birds. All the cares of life are now over, their young broods are around them, and now, with nothing to do but to enjoy themselves in the freedom of nature, where—on every hand, on every bush and tree, and in every outlying field—though the crops are now carried, all except, perhaps, here and there a solitary field in which the bean-shocks stand up black in the golden autumnal sunshine; but here, and there, and everywhere, a full table is spread, and they are welcome to enjoy. In spring and summer, the yellow-hammer sings a peculiar but mournful sort of little ditty, composed of a few short, sonorous notes, concluding with one long drawn out. In the midland counties, where stocking-weaving is the business of the people, the note of the bird is said to resemble the working of the machine—ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-e-e-chay—the prolonged latter syllable being what the stockinger calls, in the machine movement, “pressing over the arch.” In other parts of the country this bird’s song is interpreted as “A little bit of bread, and—no-cheese!” which may just as well be “A little bird am I, and—no thief!” [Illustration: YELLOW-HAMMER AND NEST. [Page 112. ] The food of this bird consists of the seeds of all kinds of grasses, chickweeds, polygonums, and other such weeds; also, in summer, when food is needed for the young, insects and larvæ. [Sidenote: _Its Picturesque Nest._]