Locating ourselves behind an open window near the beehives, we watched. A vine trellis with top bar uncovered offered safe footing to phœbe; on she came with five young phœbes hatched on the fourth-floor flat under the eaves. The young birds were whining for food. As plain as any words can be, they cried, "Bees, bees, please!" And bees they were to have for dinner! The mother led them to the trellis bar, where they squatted in a row, peeping their longings. Bees were flying thicker than hail. The mother canted her head from side to side, the black eye of the upward cant searching the homeward-bound insects. "Why don't you help yourself?" we wondered. In a few minutes the bum, bum, of the drones was heard. Then mother phœbe darted, and darted, and darted; each time she snapped a big, sting-less, bumming drone, which she killed by banging its head against the bar. Then it was taken by a little phœbe, or more often by two phœbes, who tugged at the creature until it came in two parts, or was cunningly appropriated as a whole by one of them. This meal-time went on until all were, for the time being, appeased, and the family flew off. By the middle of next day they returned and went through the same performances, very amusing to the witnesses inside the window. Now, not a single worker-bee was touched! And the mother phœbe knew the exact hour for the flying of drones. These lazy, shiftless, bumming fellows never leave the hives until the day is far advanced and the sun has warmed things up. So, not breakfast, but dinner, was made of the drones. As for the orioles, we were willing to give them a chance to speak for themselves. They appeared about April 10th, as usual. And straight for the bee corner of the garden they went. "I told you so!" said the neighbor. We watched. There were rose-bushes and vines in that part of the grounds, and to these the orioles hastened as fast as their wings could take them. The beehives sit under a row of moss-roses so thickly covered with spines that one cannot take hold of them without gloves. But this pair of orioles ran up and down and in and out without fear. These and many other rose-bushes did they examine minutely, pecking away as fast as they could move their beaks. Right at the entrance to the hives they went, on straggling briers, but not a bee did they touch. We were as close to them as we wished to be. Suddenly we scared them away before they should have devoured every secret, and there was retreat for our neighbor! The orioles had been eating the little green plant-lice that infest rose-bushes early in the spring.