AROUND OUR RANCH-HOUSE. 95 



knowing whether to be afraid or not, and turning- 

 one ear trumpet and then the other. But though 

 smiling at him, I was a human being, there was 

 no getting around that ; and after a few undecided 

 hops, this way and that, he ran off and dis- 

 appeared in the brush. Near where he had been 

 was a spot where a number of rabbit runways came 

 to a centre, and around it the rabbit council had 

 been sitting in a circle, their footprints proved. 



Brown chippies were not much commoner 

 around the ranch-house than western house wrens 

 were, but the big prosaic brown birds seemed 

 much more commonplace. The wrens were 

 strongly individual and winning wherever they 

 were met. They nested in all sorts of odd nooks 

 and corners about the buildings. One went so 

 far as to take up its abode in the wire-screened 

 refrigerator that stood outside the kitchen under 

 an oak ! Another pair stowed their nest away in 

 an old nose-bag hanging on a peg in the wine 

 shed ; while a third lived in one of the old grape 

 crates piled up in the raisin shed. 



The crate nest was delightful to watch. The 

 jolly little birds, with tails over their backs and 

 wings hanging, would sing and work close beside 

 me, only three or four feet away. They would look 

 up at me with their frank fearless eyes and then 

 squeeze down through their crack into the crate, 

 and sit and scold inside it — such an amusing 

 muffled little scold! The nest was so astonish- 



