A WOODLAND INTIMATE. 25 



scarce any uneasiness at our investigations, 

 and we soon came away ; stopping, as we 

 left the wood, to spy out the nest of a scar- 

 let tanager, the feminine builder of which 

 was just then busy with giving it some fin- 

 ishing touches. 



It had been a pleasant stroll, I thought, 

 nothing more ; but it proved to be the 

 beginning of an adventure which, to me at 

 least, was in the highest degree novel and 

 interesting. 



I ought, perhaps, to premise that the sol- 

 itary vireo (called also the blue-headed vi- 

 reo and the blue-headed greenlet) is strictly 

 a bird of the woods. It belongs to a dis- 

 tinctively American family, and is one of 

 five species which are more or less abun- 

 dant as summer residents in Eastern Mas- 

 sachusetts, being itself in most places the 

 least numerous of the five, and, with the 

 possible exception of the white -eye, the 

 most retiring. My own hunting-grounds 

 happen to be one of its favorite resorts 

 (there is none better in the State, I suspect), 

 so that I am pretty certain of having two 

 or three pairs under my eye every season, 

 within a radius of half a mile. I have 



