FIELD AND STUDY 



facing each other with drooping wings and throb- 

 bing breasts. The grape-post wren seemed to be 

 in the more aggressive mood. When he could stand 

 it no longer, he would dart up the hill at his opponent 

 on the low branch of a maple, who never stood to 

 his guns, and the two would make a brown streak 

 in a wide circle around the maples and the Study, 

 and down the hill round the summer-house, keep- 

 ing just so far apart, and never actually coming to 

 blows. Then they would take up their old positions 

 and renew the vocal contest with the same spirit as 

 before, till one of them was again carried off his feet 

 and hurled himself at his rival on the maple-branch. 

 Round and round they would go, squeaking and 

 chattering, but never ruffling a feather. Hour after 

 hour, with brief intervals, and at times day after 

 day, these two little hot but happy spirits played 

 the comedy of this mimic war. It was not even a 

 tempest in a teapot; it was tempest in a nutshell, 

 but there was a vast deal of nature in it for all that. 

 Both birds simply overflowed with the emotions 

 proper to the season and the conditions. 



The mate of the grape-post bird had a nest in 

 a box farther down the hill, where the care of her 

 young occupied her most of her time. She scolded 

 as only wrens can scold when I went poking about 

 her box, but my poking about the box of the male 

 did not agitate the owner at all. I tried to explore 

 the inside with my finger, but found it apparently 

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