A PUZZLE IN BIRDS 



up courage and at frequent Intervals came with an 

 insect and fed the little fellows in turn. In a short 

 time I had a dozen as good feeding pictures as I could 

 want. 



Leaving the Sparrows, now, to be studied afield, I 

 must tell a little about that other group of birds in this 

 finch family which we referred to at the beginning of 

 the chapter as the more southerly fellows which are 

 large of beak. The next one after the sparrows, as 

 numbered in the American Ornithologists' Union 

 Check List, is the handsome and common bird variously 

 known as Towhee or Chewink, and I have also heard 

 it called Swamp Robin. This is the black and white 

 fellow, with brown markings, who plays hide and seek 

 w^ith us in the bushy pasture, the scrub land, or along 

 the roadside. He is bound to see who you are, but 

 does not intend that you shall see him very much, 

 though he calls out a pert inquiring **tow-hee," or 

 *' chewink," as he seems to different observers to say. 

 But when he thinks there is no one around to bother 

 him, he stands up proudly on the top of a bare tree 

 that tow^ers above the thicket of scrub and sings a 

 happy and more pretentious song. The nest is hidden 

 away in a brush heap or under a small buch and about 

 the only way I know of finding it is to flush from it the 

 brownish female, who will soon return with her black- 

 gowned husband and set up a great outcry. Once I 

 was shown a nest out in the open in the hollow of a 

 grassy bank in a pasture. The female was in charge 



172 



