TALKS WITH YOUNG OBSERVERS 299 



cavity in a limb of a pear-tree. The female is lay- 

 ing her eggs, one each day, probably, and the male 

 is making life as easy for her as possible, by collect- 

 ing all her food for her. 



Hence, when as I came down the drive and a blue 

 jay alighted in a maple near me, I paused to observe 

 him. He wiped his beak on a limb, changed his 

 position a couple of times, then uttered a low mel- 

 low note. The voice as of a young jay, tender and 

 appealing, came out of a Norway spruce near by. 

 The cry was continued, when the bird I was watch- 

 ing flew in amid the top branches, and the cry be- 

 came still more urgent and plaintive. I stepped 

 along a few paces and saw the birds, the female 

 standing up in her nest and the male feeding her. 

 The nest was placed in a sort of basket formed by 

 the whorl of up-curving branches at the top of the 

 tree, the central shaft being gone. 



It contained four eggs of a dirty brownish green- 

 ish color. As I was climbing up to it, a turtle dove 

 threw herself out of the tree and fluttered to the 

 ground as if mortally wounded. My little boy was 

 looking on, and seeing the dove apparently so help- 

 less and in such distress, ran to see "what in the 

 world ailed it." It fluttered along before him for 

 a few yards, and then its mate appearing upon the 

 scene, the two flew away, much to the surprise of 

 the boy. We soon found the doves' nest, a shelf 

 of twigs on a branch about midway of the tree. It 

 held two young birds nearly fledged. How they 

 seemed to pant as they crouched there, a shapeless 



