KNIGHTS OF THE CHISEL 



bird was building only about ten feet up, at the edge 

 of the Cooper's Hawk grove, and, though there was 

 no other tree close by on which to rig the camera, I 

 thought I could manage somehow to get a picture, if 

 nothing better turned up. 



But we discovered plenty more nests. One day I 

 found as many as half a dozen in a tract of woods 

 where the trees were dying from an excess of water. 

 Unfortunately every one of them was high up. Another 

 nest was in the midst of unusual life and activity, 

 though in lonely woods well up the side of a hill. The 

 Flickers had dug a hole twenty feet up a dead chestnut 

 stub. Fifteen feet higher, at the top, a pair of flying 

 squirrels had young in the Flicker's last year hole. At 

 the base of the stub, under some rocks, were two en- 

 trances to an occupied fox burrow. Evidently the 

 young foxes played there, for the ground was thoroughly 

 trampled, and at one front door were turkey bones 

 and feathers and some fresh green leaves. Within a 

 few rods a pair of Oven-birds had a nest on the ground, 

 surprisingly well concealed, for even the foxes had not 

 found it. Besides this, a Red-eyed Vireo couple had 

 built in the fork of a sapling, just out of Reynard's 

 reach, and a somber-hued female Scarlet Tanager 

 brooded higher up, out on the extended branch of an 

 oak. 



But after all Ned beat me, for he found the best nest 

 of all, and handy to home at that. It was in an apple 

 tree in an orchard, on the west side where it had some 



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