He earns his living by helping farmers clear their fields of potato-bugs.

If you go quietly over to the large potato lot on the north side of the Farm, you will find these birds at work any morning.

I saw them myself to-day, and am going to trust my crop entirely to their keeping this season.

They are nesting in the young growth near these very river woods, and I will show you one of their homes presently.

You see that protecting birds, and leaving suitable bits of woodland and brush for them to build in, is practical as well as sentimental.
[Illustration: Rose-breasted Grosbeak.] "This Grosbeak dares not trust its brilliant colors in large trees or open places, and so nests where it may hide in a maze of bushes.