Bird -Lore 



On April 20, three days later, I visited the spot. One young was gone. The 

 mother again played the coward. The accompanying in situ photograph of the 

 one remaining young was taken from the sister tree. On April 23, the nest was 



empty. I thereupon vowed 

 eternal hatred to all Piiion 

 Jays. It was their w'ork, I 

 am sure. 



No other nest was found. 

 All the early -summer 

 through, that imperious and 

 insistent " Pee-tiv, pee-tiv, 

 pee- tiv - tiv - tiv " might be 

 heard among the shale hills 

 of Weston county, or on the 

 venerable slopes of the Bear 

 Lodge, full sixty miles away. 

 More remarkable still, par- 

 ent Crossbills were more than 

 once observed feeding juve- 

 niles that were, unquestion- 

 ably, at least three months 

 old, with beaks yet not fully 

 developed. A delicious bit 

 of a drizzly-day story must 

 end this little sketch: Atop 

 the Bear Lodge Hills, in 

 Crook countv, Wvoming, one 

 KEST AND ONE YOUXG OF CROSSBILL j,^^^ ^^^.^ j i^xxo^^■td a mani- 



festly fidgety Western Tanager on a most provokingly futile bit of a wild-goose 

 chase. This ended, as such quest often does, by the connubial bird depositing 

 her nesting material at no end of a distance from the one sacred spot where it 

 really belongs. And the rain, it rained! But then followed a piece of the rarest 

 good luck. A female Crossbill was gathering shreds of cedar bark. She flitted, 

 oblivious of the black slicker below her, to the mid-branches of a small bull- 

 pine. And there, quite near the trunk, was the rudiment of a nest. 



The material was lightly spread, and then she sat upon it. But, when I looked 

 for her to go away again, in a few moments, after more bark, she went not. 

 Then I trained the field-glass upon her, and waited for an explanation. It came 

 soon. Beneath her, as she now and then arose, gingerlv, upon her toes, there sat, 

 I saw, a most bedraggled juvenile, — soaked through, \et apparently cheerful, 

 withal. And who would not be, if his mother, finding the weaving of a fiber 

 blanket upon somebody's deserted bed futile to fend the rain, should straight- 

 wav make a blanket of her own clothinsf? 



