34 Bulletin N'o. 20. 



Once I saw on the black mud which the overflow from the spring keeps 

 wet, one of these tiny birds drinking from a dot of a lake, and it made 

 me think of a delicate lace handkerchief dropped on a dusty floor, it was 

 so small and frail and beautiful, and the black earth seemed so unfit for 

 it to touch. I did not find the nest that year. The next spring I was 

 puzzled for a long time by two bird songs which I could not place. I 

 always heard them from the higher trees, and although I could get 

 glimpses of the birds who sang them, they would not come down and tell 

 me their names. The voice of one bird was slightly shrill, and the song 

 went like this "- /- - - - - ' " a trill followed by one longer ac- 

 cented note. The other was much sweeter and more varied, '' -\\\ \" 



represents the changes in the notes as well as I can give them. I was 

 quite convinced that there were two different birds, but found at last 

 that it was just one, and that, the Parula warbler. Besides these two 

 songs there is the common call note "chip, chip," 



Then one day when I was out a bird flashed by me and up into a tree 

 close by. I followed its flight and there was again the Parula's nest and 

 again in a hemlock ! About twenty-five feet high, in the lowest branch, 

 and where the green was thickest and pendent, this time without any 

 outside help to make them so, it just grew that way, and Madam Parula 

 had looked and seen that it was just the place for a nest. The tree stood 

 just outside my garden fence and about a rod from the tree that held the 

 nest two years ago. The nest was not quite finished as the birds made 

 many trips to and from it, and jerked and twitched things about when- 

 ever they were in it. After a week, Madam was evidently sitting, and 

 several times while I watched, the male flew to the tree singing as he 

 reached it ; and almost instantly the female came out and flew off. She 

 was gone perhaps five minutes and sometimes the male dived down into 

 that dark spot in the branches and stayed until she came back, when he 

 flew out and she in, without apparently seeing each other, though pass- 

 ing just above the nest, just pretending I suppose. At other times the 

 male perched on a twig close to the nest and repeated his song, until his 

 mate came back, when he flew off and could be heard singing about the 

 trees all day. 



Then for a week I was vmable to visit the nest, and when I did it was 

 deserted, but since I heard the song for the rest of the season I concluded 

 the birds were safely hatched and flown in that short time. In the fall 

 my husband climbed the tree and brought me the bough with the nest, 

 and at last I could see how it was made. Very frail and the wall so 

 thin one side was formed by only three or four bare twigs of hemlock, 



