Phoebe 191 



cries as a couple of feathers wavered down to the grass. 

 Of course the phoebes would stand no show with the lin- 

 nets. The phoebes were peaceable while the linnets were 

 bold and impetuous, noisy in joy as well as in anger. 



The linnets continued with their house as rapidly as 

 possible, while the phoebes sat around and watched most 

 of the time. For several days they didn't add any to their 

 home, yet they couldn't give up the idea of abandoning 

 their site on the bracket. Late in the afternoon, after the 

 linnets ceased working and had gone to bed, the phoebes 

 were always there flitting about the rose stakes and the 

 fence. Then in the dusk they would flutter up to the wire 

 under the eaves and go to sleep close to the usurpers' nest. 

 I looked for the tyrants to come out and forbid the phoebes 

 sleeping so close to them, but they didn't. It was perhaps 

 too much trouble for them to stir out after their early 

 bedtime. 



Before long I knew the phoebes had taken up another 

 home site, for they stayed away most of the day and only 

 returned in the evening to roost. Then later only one of 

 them, the father I took it to be, came to roost on the wire. 

 I watched every evening, but he always slept alone. 



I became curious as to where the mother phoebe had 

 her nest, and I watched for several days but could not see 

 where the father went or where he came from. But one 

 day, while crossing through a small clump of trees, I saw 

 one of the phoebes snap up a butterfly and fly over toward 

 a deserted cabin. No one had occupied the cabin for sev- 

 eral years I thought, yet when I got there I found it in- 

 habited by two families. At the back, just under the 

 shelter of the overhanging shingles, the phoebes had plas- 



