FEATHERED GEMS 



hidden by foliage, it is usually quite hard to discover, 

 so well does it harmonize with its surroundings. There 

 was a spot in a grove where a pair of Redstarts were in 

 evidence all the time, and I was sure there must be a 

 nest close by. One evening I watched the female 

 hopping uneasily about, and I peered and peeped, 

 scanning every limb, without result. The next morn- 

 ing I went to the same spot, and the very first thing I 

 spied her sitting on her nest five feet up a sapling in a 

 crotch, within a few feet of where she had been the 

 night before. I set up the camera near the nest, and 

 she went right on again with hardly any hesitation. 

 The shade was dense, so I got a mirror, threw light on 

 her and the nest, and by the thread made a number of 

 exposures, both as she sat on her four eggs and as she 

 was coming to them. 



Very hard to find are the nests of the ground-building 

 Warblers. Indeed if it were not for flushing them by 

 chance from their nests, the quest would be almost 

 hopeless. The Black and White Warbler is one of 

 these. Withal that it is so common in the woods, its 

 nest is very hard to discover, and I have only found it 

 twice, with eggs and with young. In the former case I 

 flushed the female by the base of a tree in swampy 

 woods. In the other, one June 14th, Ned and I heard 

 the female chirping in some dry hemlock w^oods. We 

 hid to watch, and presently saw her run down a trunk 

 and disappear in the dry leaves. After a few minutes 

 we stole up and surprised her on the nest. She went 



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