DELAWARE VALLEY ORNITHOLOGICAL CLUB. 11 



nest was near. I found the nest onlj' when there was no other 

 liand-space in an area thirty feet square to look in. Just a foot 

 from my feet in the spot where I first stopped was the nest, 

 but so still were the birds and so like their color and that of the 

 leaves and fibres out of which the nest was moulded to that of 

 the debris in the neighborhood that my eye had failed to spot 

 them. There they sat fiacked in closely, three on the floor of 

 the nest and two back of and half on top of their fellows. All 

 were facing my way, but by not so much as an eyelid's quiver 

 did they indicate their presence, when I stopped within touch- 

 ing distance of them. I had seen the parents the day before a 

 little down stream from their home and watched them running 

 along the sides of the stream and out into the shallows which 

 extended far into the stream, owing to the verj- gradual dip of 

 the rock that was here the stream's bottom. Beautiful I had 

 then thought them, their chocolate-brown * backs and spotted 

 breasts and clear buff throats standing out distinctly against the 

 red shale of the shallows. Then I had noticed their habit of 

 flying up stream a certain distance, then hunting down stream, 

 and then flying up to begin the hunt down over the same ground 

 again, just like the European "water thrush" or dipper that 

 I had first seen in Keimanagh Pass in Kerry. I did not then 

 notice them and I have never noticed them run under water 

 like the dipper, but they chase gnats out into water two inches 

 deep and gather larvae from the stones in midstream, flying out 

 to them and then hunting around them if the water is not too 

 deep or too swift. 



Now I had a still better chance to view them, for the longer 

 I searched for the nest the more anxious they became, since all 

 the while the young were going hungry. Both old birds walked 

 about nervously, tilting their tails up like the Solitary Sand- 

 piper. Worm in mouth as they were, they could utter their 

 complaining " tswit" as sharply as ever. I sat still for a long 

 time and they finally came close to me, tilting themselves about 

 on rocks and logs not ten feet away. The female — as I took it 

 to be because it was the more worried of the two — came the 



* [ii this light there was none of the '■ olive" the books speak of on tlieir 

 backs. 



