FRIENDS IN FEATHERS 



fluttering disconsolately around the location. I dislike cats 

 more than any snake I ever saw. A few days later, having heard 

 rny lamentations about this nest, Bob found one for me in a 

 small haw bush on his lease. 



This pair was brooding for the first time and wild as any birds 

 I ever saw. There was no hope of a study of the grown birds 

 without a long preliminary training, and small chance for it at 

 that, so for the sake of the series I made a study of this nest at 

 once. A mystifying thing about it was that the birds building 

 for the first time made a neater, more compact nest than those of 

 previous experience. Nothing was used in it save dry grass of a 

 fine variety. The four eggs were similar to all I ever have seen, 

 snow white, although some naturalists report eggs of a bluish 

 white and one responsible man has seen at least one nest having 

 speckled eggs. 



I never succeeded in getting either of this pair before the 

 camera, probably because I had a triumph in the picture of the 

 brooding male, so I did not try as I would have done if I had se- 

 cured no Indigo pictures at all. The young of this nest were 

 stodgy little fellows coloured much like the mother and always 

 stuffed almost to the bursting point. If I were asked to prove 

 the value of the Indigo bluebird as an exterminator of insects and 

 weed seeds, I should unhesitatingly offer this study of the four 

 young from a nest which I visited often, for each trip found 

 them always in the same plethoric state, while the elders seemed 

 sleek and well fed also. The reason only three show in the 

 picture is that the baby moved to the left until he was 

 bisected. 



In going back and forth to Bob's lease for these Indigo Finch 

 studies, I noticed each evening on the home-way, that a Finch 

 sang on a telephone wire beside the levee, at the west end of the 

 river bridge. I hunted for his nest among the tangle of small 



78 



