BIRD ENEMIES. At 
nnder the eaves of the house, and all appeared to go 
well till the young were nearly fledged, when the nest 
suddenly became a bit of purgatory. The birds kept 
their places in their burning bed till they could hold 
out no longer, when they leaped forth and fell dead 
upon the ground. 
After a delay of a week or more, during which I 
imagine the parent birds purified themselves by every 
means known to them, the couple built another nest a 
few yards from the first, and proceeded to rear a sec- 
ond brood ; but the new nest developed into the same 
bed of torment that the first did, and the three young 
birds, nearly ready to fly, perished as they sat within 
it. The parent birds then left the place as if it had 
been accursed. 
I imagine the smaller birds have an enemy in our 
native white-footed mouse, though I have not proof 
enough to convict him. But one season the nest of a 
chickadee which I was observing was broken up in a 
position where nothing but a mouse could have reached 
it. The bird had chosen a cavity in the limb of an ap- 
ple-tree which stood but a few yards from the house. 
The cavity was deep, and the entrance to it, which was 
ten feet from the ground, was small. Barely light 
enough was admitted, when the sun was in the most 
favorable position, to enable one to make out the num- 
ber of eggs, which was six, at the bottom of the dim 
interior. While one was peering in and trying to get 
his head out of his own light, the bird would startle 
him by a queer kind of puffing sound. She would 
not leave her nest like most birds, but really tried to 
blow, or scare, the intruder away; and after repeated 
experinients I could hardly refrain from jerking my 
head back when that little explosion of sound came up 
