THE JUNCO FAMILY. 133 



fants sound asleep on their hair mattress. We 

 sat down to wait, and in a moment we heard the 

 anxious "pip" of the returning parents. They 

 had been attending to their regular morning 

 work, and both brought food for those young- 

 sters, who woke inopportunely — as babies will 

 — and demanded it instantly. 



Junco — for he was the head of this house- 

 hold — paused on a twig near by, opened and 

 shut his beautiful white-bordered tail, in the 

 embarrassing consideration whether he should 

 go in before our eyes and take the risk of our 

 intentions, or let his evidently starving offspring 

 suffer. He "eyed us over; " he waited till his 

 modest little spouse, acting from feeling rather 

 than from judgment (as was to be expected from 

 one of her unreasoning sex), had slipped in from 

 below, administered her morsel to those precious 

 ba,bies, and escaped unharmed. Then he plucked 

 up courage, boldly entered his door, gave a poke 

 behind it, and flew away. 



A week later, after we had called as usual one 

 morning and found the house empty, he brought 

 his pretty snow-birdlings in their tidy striped 

 bibs up to the grove at the back door, where we 

 often heard his sharp trilling little song, and 

 saw him working like some bigger papas to keep 

 the dear clamorous mouths filled. 



The Junco neighborhood was a populous part 



