116 NOETH CAROLINA 



eye upon the nest. My ear, as it happened, 

 had marked the spot precisely. " Here it 

 is," I thought, and in a fraction of a minute 

 more the anxious mother showed herself, 



a snowbird. The nest looked somewhat 

 larger than those I had seen in New Hamp- 

 shire, but that may have been a fault of 

 memory. 1 It contained young birds and a 

 single egg. I was in great luck, I said to 

 myself; but in truth, as a longer experi- 

 ence showed, the birds were so numerous all 

 about me that it would have been no very 

 difficult undertaking to find a nest or two 

 almost any day. 



Birds which had been isolated (separated 

 from the parent stock) long enough to have 

 taken on some constant physical peculiarity 



without which they could not be entitled 

 to a distinctive name, though it were only a 

 third one might be presumed to have ac- 

 quired at the same time some slight but real 

 idiosyncrasy of voice and language. But if 

 this is true of the Carolina junco, I failed to 

 satisfy myself of the fact. On the first day, 



1 My first impression was correct. Mr. Brewster, as I 

 now notice, says of the nest that it is " larger and com- 

 posed of coarser material " than that of Junco hyemalis. 



