14 PROCEEDINGS OK THE 



were legion roundabout, it may have been a chipmunk, or a red 

 squirrel, or a snake. Sometimes I think that overkindness in 

 feeding the mother brought death to the young, for she would 

 regurgitate the egg and cracker given lier and feed it to them. 

 Again, I wonder if lice were not responsible, for there were 

 many in the nest, and even while the one squab that had not 

 disappeared was lying in the nest the mother came back and 

 carefully ate the lice off the nest and the little bird, whose plumj) 

 and unwounded body puzzled me as to how it came by its end. 



The lateness of the nest's building would indicate that its 

 builders had already tried to raise a brood before this attemj)t, 

 and the presence a hundred yards further down the mountain 

 of a nest whose eggs were destroyed about June 1st, made it 

 more likely that the nest of which I write was the second failure. 



During the rcmating of mid-.Jul\' the male started to l)uild 

 again just back of our shack, but he never got further with it 

 than the wrajiping of tlie silk of little cocoons around the two 

 twigs of the fork of a little maple. I saw him here off and on 

 for a week; but either the site proved on second consideration 

 disadvantageous, or the birds concluded it was too late now to 

 attempt a third brood. After the beginning of the last week in 

 Jul}', I did not see him fussing about the little maple, although 

 he still visited us daily. I never saw his mate there at all, 

 though she frequently accompanied him on his visits to our 

 trees until August 13th. This was the last day until September ■ 

 2d on which T heard him sing liis shorter song, (u-un-cet, twuweet. 

 iunetchmveet, turu. The mating-song had died away two weeks 

 earlier. Early in September, after an absence of three weeks, 

 and now moulting, the two revisited us again. It may be the 

 moulting had kept them in hiding. I would like to think that 

 it was family cares, but I am afraid it was not, for when they 

 returned there were no young with them, as there were with two 

 pairs of Redeyes, late in the season though it was. September 

 7th was the last day on which I saw the Solitarj' Vireo, and then 

 it was in the neighborhood of the nest where I had watched 

 them for a month. 



It is not as they were, the last time I saw them, nor as tlie 

 settled brooding pair of the late June, but as the wandering 



