NESTLINGS OF FOREST AND MARSH 
like hot pebbles to my prying fingers. She 
left for two hours at a time, and this, with 
an open nest in a tree, would certainly prove 
fatal to the eggs after incubation has begun. 
Often and often I. feared that she had de- 
serted it entirely, and began to reproach 
myself as being the cause, but always, just 
as my conscience became seriously alarmed, 
she slipped back, noiselessly as a wee brown 
mouse. I never saw the father bring her 
food or notice her at all, yet no move of 
hers escaped his watchful eyes. 
On the morning the first egg hatched 
there was: a change in the vicinity of that 
small homestead. The father, no longer at 
his post scolding, was either silently flitting 
to the nest with small bugs in his beak or 
singing his merriest several feet farther away 
than usual, trying by every art to attract 
attention to himself. But we cautiously 
pushed up to the doorway, and on finding 
there were young, cut a slit in the top of 
the nest to look at them. Four naked 
pinky nestlings, with wee heads, mere nobs 
126 
