12 BIRDS. 
from the dark interior. One night, when incubation 
was about half finished, the nest was harried. A 
slight trace of hair or fur at the entrance led me to 
infer that some small animal was the robber. A 
weasel might have done it, as they sometimes climb 
trees, but I doubt if either a squirrel or a rat could 
have passed the entrance. 
Probably few persons have ever suspected the cat- 
bird of being an egg-sucker; I do not know as she 
has ever been accused of such a thing, but there is 
something uncanny and disagreeable about her, which 
I at once understood, when I one day caught her in 
the very act of going through a nest of eggs. 
A pair of the least fly-catchers, the bird which says 
chebeque, chebeque, and is a small edition of the pewee, 
one season built their nest where I had them for many 
hours each day under my observation. The nest was 
a very snug and compact structure placed in the forks 
of a small maple about twelve feet from the ground. 
The season before, a red squirrel had harried the nest 
of a wood-thrush in this same tree, and I was appre- 
hensive that he would serve the fly-catchers the same 
trick; so, as I sat with my book in a summer-house 
near by, I kept my loaded gun within easy reach. 
One egg was laid, and the next morning, as 1 made 
my daily inspection of the nest, only a fragment of 
its empty shell was to be found. This I removed, 
mentally imprecating the rogue of a red squirrel. 
The birds were much disturbed by the event, but did 
not desert the nest, as I had feared they would, but 
after much inspection of it and many consultations 
together, concluded, it seems, to try again. Two 
more eggs were laid, when one day I heard the birds 
utter a sharp cry, and on looking up I saw a cat-bird 
