58 BIRD STORIES FROM BURROUGHS 



ment on her guard lest you discover her secret ! 

 Five eggs were laid, and incubation was far ad- 

 vanced, when the storms and winds came. The 

 cradle indeed did rock. The boughs did not break, 

 but they swayed and separated as you would part 

 your two interlocked hands. The ground of the 

 little valley fairly gave way, the nest tilted over 

 till its contents fell into the chasm. It was like 

 an earthquake that destroys a hamlet. 



No born tree-builder would have placed its 

 nest in such a situation. Birds that build at the 

 end of the branch, like the oriole, tie the nest 

 fast; others, like the robin, build against the 

 main trunk ; still others build securely in the 

 fork. The sparrow, in her ignorance, rested her 

 house upon the spray of two branches, and when 

 the tempest came, the branches parted company 

 and the nest was engulfed. 



A little bob-tailed song sparrow built her nest 

 in a pile of dry brush very near the kitchen door 

 of a farmhouse on the skirts of the northern 

 Catskills, where I was passing the summer. It was 

 late in July, and she had doubtless reared one 

 brood in the earlier season. Her toilet was decid- 

 edly the worse for wear. I noted her day after 

 day, very busy about the fence and quince bushes 

 between the house and milk house, with her beak 

 full of coarse straw and hay. To a casual observer, 



