A BARN-DOOR OUTLOOK 



cepted that little moth in its unsteady, zigzagging 

 flight. She is an expert at this sort of thing; it is her 

 business to take her game on the wing; but the 

 moths are experts in zigzag flying, and Phoebe 

 missed her mark three times. I heard the snap of 

 her beak at each swoop. It is almost impossible for 

 any insectivorous bird except a flycatcher to take a 

 moth or a butterfly on the wing. 



Last year in August the junco, or common snow- 

 bird, came into the big barn and built her nest in the 

 side of the haymow, only a few feet from me. The 

 clean, fragrant hay attracted her as it had attracted 

 me. One would have thought that in a haymow she 

 had nesting material near at hand. But no; her 

 nest-building instincts had to take the old rut; she 

 must bring her own material from without; the 

 haymow was only the mossy bank or the wood-side 

 turf where her species had hidden their nests for 

 untold generations. She did not weave one spear of 

 the farmer's hay into her nest, but brought in the 

 usual bits of dry grass and weeds and horsehair and 

 shaped the fabric after the old pattern, tucking it 

 well in under the drooping locks of hay. As I sat 

 morning after morning weaving my thoughts to- 

 gether and looking out of the great barn doorway 

 into sunlit fields, the junco wove her straws and 

 horsehairs, and deposited there on three successive 

 days her three exquisite eggs. 



Why the bird departed so widely from the usual 

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