WAS IT A SEQUEL? 57 



sun, or walked carefully over the branches looking- 

 for food for the young. Some days before find- 

 ing- out the facts, I suspected that the wood pewee 

 perching on the old tree had more important 

 business there, for the way he and his mate flew 

 back and forth to the oak top was very pointed. 

 So again I moved my chair. To my delight the 

 wood pewee flew up in the tree, sat down on a 

 horizontal crotch, and went through the motions 

 of moulding. 



There were two birds, however, that simply 

 used the tree as a resting-place, as far as I ever 

 knew. A hummingbird perched on the tip of 

 a twig, looking from below like a good sized 

 bumblebee as he preened his feathers and looked 

 off upon the world below. At the other side of 

 the oak a pretty pink dove perched on a sunny 

 branch that arched against the blue sky. It sat 

 close to the branch beside the green leaves and 

 dressed its feathers or dozed quietly in the sun. 

 We had other visitors that the house owners did 

 not accept so willingly. The gnatcatchers up the 

 sand ditch whose nest had been broken up by 

 the thief-in-the-night did not object to brown chip- 

 pies, but perhaps, if this were the same pair, they 

 had been made suspicious by their trouble. In 

 any case, when a brown chippie lit on a limb near 

 the nest, quite accidentally I believe, and turned 

 to look at the pretty structure, quite innocently I 

 feel sure, the little gnats fell on him tooth and 



