However, it cannot be denied that the king-birds do eat bees, when they can find nothing they like better. We have often wondered what they do with so many stings, and why they are not poisoned by them. We have not examined a king-bird's throat to find out this secret, but a friend of ours did look at the throat of a toad which persisted in eating his bees on warm summer evenings. This man found a good many stings on the side of the toad's throat, which had caught there when he swallowed the bees. Stings are probably not poisonous to toads and bee-birds. [Illustration: Loggerhead Shrike.] Hardly anybody speaks a good word for the butcher-bird or shrike.[9] Yet this bird is not half so bad as most people think he is. It is true that he has been caught a few times in doing very naughty things, such as making a dinner on a small chicken, or on birds weaker than himself. [9] _Lanius ludovicianus._ But his most common food consists of insects, especially Jerusalem crickets. This great yellow cricket is an inch or two inches long, and he looks as bad as he is reported to be, for he wears a suit of clothes with brown and yellow stripes, running around, instead of up and down in the usual way for stripes. This makes one think of a convict or a convict's suit of clothes. Now the shrike, or butcher-bird, does us a great favor by making as many meals as he can of these great crickets. These crickets are the fellows that dig holes in our potatoes while they are in the ground and bite the roots off from our pansies and other plants. The butcher-bird also eats grasshoppers and beetles, and other enemies to our roots and grains. So we see that he is more our friend than our enemy. This bird, which we have all learned to despise so much, could teach us a good lesson in his line of work, for he is a very merciful and kind butcher. He is in the habit of killing his victim quickly, and does not hang it up alive on a thorn, as some people think he does. He probably fastens his dinner in that way that he may pull it to pieces easier and know where to find it when he is hungry again. The English sparrow[10] is another bird that has a bad name, and he deserves what is said of him more than some of the other birds. He is quarrelsome and selfish and very unlovable. But in spite of this we have sometimes put him to a good use, and have grown to look upon the little tyrant as quite capable of adding to the comfort of our families. [10] _Passer domesticus_, introduced into the United States from Europe. Once there was a sick child in our family, and we happened to think that the sparrow would make a good supper for our little invalid. The birds were "small fry," to be sure, but we cooked them, and they were good eating. [Illustration: English Sparrow.] Then we gathered all the sparrows' eggs we could reach every morning, and cooked them. They were delicious. We felt that it was not wrong for us to take a good many of these eggs, for there were countless more.