80 BIRD STORIES FROM BURROUGHS 



over the daisies and the buttercups, looking for 

 the lost clew. We grew desperate, and fairly felt 

 the ground over with our hands, but without 

 avail. I marked the spot with a bush, and came 

 the next day, and, with the bush as a centre, 

 moved about it in slowly increasing circles, cover- 

 ing, I thought, nearly every inch of ground with 

 my feet, and laying hold of it with all the visual 

 power I could command, till my patience was ex- 

 hausted, and I gave up, baffled. I began to doubt 

 the ability of the parent birds themselves to find 

 it, and so secreted myself and watched. After 

 much delay, the male bird appeared with food in 

 his beak, and, satisfying himself that the coast 

 was clear, dropped into the grass which I had 

 trodden down in my search. Fastening my eye 

 upon a particular meadow-lily, I walked straight 

 to the spot, bent down, and gazed long and in- 

 tently into the grass. Finally my eye separated 

 the nest and its young from its surroundings. 

 My foot had barely missed them in my search, 

 but by how much they had escaped my eye I 

 could not tell. Probably not by distance at all, 

 but simply by unrecognition. They were virtually 

 invisible. The dark gray and yellowish-brown 

 dry grass and stubble of the meadow-bottom were 

 exactly copied in the color of the half-fledged 

 young. More than that, they hugged the nest so 



