The Birds and Poets 135 



took me past a clover field which ran up to the 

 roadside, with no intervening fence. I had 

 observed a pair of bobolinks flying out of the 

 grass at almost the same spot every morning as 

 I passed along the road, and on one or two occa- 

 sions looked about in the clover, in a superficial 

 way, but found no signs of the nest. Continuing 

 to see the birds at the same point, however, and 

 feeling certain that the nest was there, I resolved 

 to find it if possible. One morning after a heavy 

 rain, when the grass was beaten down by the storm, 

 I marked off an area about forty feet square in 

 the clover, around the spot where I had so often 

 seen the birds, and in which I felt certain the nest 

 would be found. I then got down on my hands 

 and knees and crept through the patch of clover, 

 back and forth over the area I had set apart for 

 the search, looking into every clump of grass, and 

 covering as wide a strip as I could reach while 

 on all fours. On previous occasions, when flush- 

 ing the birds from the grass as I passed, although 

 I would hurry to the spot, they never seemed to 

 fly up from the exact location of the nest, which 

 had therefore remained a mystery. After going 

 over most of this area on my knees, feeling almost 

 every blade of grass with my hands, I at last found 

 the nest tucked in quite among the roots of the 

 clover. It contained five dead young birds, which 

 had evidently been drowned by the storm of the 

 previous night. 



In speaking of the bobolink's art of concealing 



