WILD LIFE OF ORCHARD AND FIELD 



under some decaying log, where the nest shall be 

 well secreted in a little thicket of grasses and flow- 

 ers, or, in many cases, on bushes, vines, or even, 

 as Mr. J. S. Rowland assured me, in an old broken 

 woodpecker's hole in an apple-tree. A friend in 

 Astoria, L. I., on May 8, 1877, found a pair 

 of these sparrows snugly ensconced in an ivy 

 growing along the inner wall of a green-house. 

 The birds had evidently watched their opportunity 

 when the door was opened or the glass raised dur- 

 ing the warm days, and constructed their nest 

 and deposited three eggs before they were discov- 

 ered. In 1875 they built a nest in the same place, 

 and the year before on the ground against the 

 wall just outside. A pair had been around there 

 for a great while, a nest being found within a hun- 

 dred feet of the spot for some six or seven years. 

 Wherever placed, it is a model and poetic bird- 

 dwelling. 



"What care the bird has taken not to disturb 

 one straw or spear of grass or thread of moss ! You 

 cannot approach it and put your hand into it with- 

 out violating the place more or less, and yet the 

 little architect has wrought day after day and 

 left no marks. There has been an excavation, 

 and yet no grain of earth appears to have been 



151 



