We "go fishing" every day; but not for sport as you boys do. No, indeed, we must get a catch or go hungry. Our long bills are better than a hook and line, and our long legs enable us to wade in the water without getting our clothes--feathers, I mean,--wet. Fish, frogs, and crawfish make up our diet, and as we have very healthy appetites it takes a great many of them to make a meal. Like some other birds I have more than one name. _Blue Crane_, _Little Blue_, _Little Crane_, _Skimmer_, and _Scissorsbill_. Some people call me "gawky." Is that a name, too? To see us standing on one foot, by the margin of a stream, the very picture of loneliness, you would little imagine what gay birds we are just before the mating season in the spring. In order to show off our best points before the lady-birds, off we all go to some secluded spot, form a circle or ring, in which each male bird in turn performs his showing off act. We skip, flap our wings, curve our necks, and prance around, the lady-birds expressing their approval by deep croaks, something like a bull-frog's, while the envious cocks keep up a running fire of remarks in the rasping tones of a horse-fiddle. Each performer when his act is done, resumes his place in the circle, and so it goes on, till every male has displayed his accomplishments and good looks before the lady-birds. Then we return to our feeding grounds, and nose around in the water for our supper. It does sound odd to hear a bird of my size talk about flying, doesn't it? But in truth my body is very light, weighing between four and five pounds. I am long from bill to tail, and my wings are very long and curving. My legs? Oh that is a matter I dislike to talk about. They certainly speak for themselves. ---- A FOSTER BROTHER'S KINDNESS. A YOUNG Oriole was rescued from the water where it had evidently just fallen from the nest. When taken home it proved a ready pet and was given full freedom of the place. Some weeks later a nestling from another brood was placed in the same cage with the other. The newcomer had not yet learned to feed himself, and like a baby as it was, cried incessantly for food. The first captive though but a fledgling himself, proceeded to feed the orphan with all the tender solicitude of a parent. "It was irresistably cunning and heartsome, too," says the narrator, W. L. Dawson, in the _Bulletin_, "to see the bird select with thoughtful kindness a morsel of food and hop over toward the clamoring stranger and drop it in his mouth, looking at it afterward with an air as much as to say, 'there, baby, how did you like that?' This trait was not shown by a chance exhibition, but became a regular habit, and was still followed when the older bird had attained to fly catching. It upset all ones notions about instinct and made one think of a Golden Rule for birds." ---- A GOOSE THAT TAKES A HEN SAILING.