THE TRAGEDIES OF THE NESTS. 91 



my eye I could not tell. Probably not by distance at 

 all, but simply by unrecognition. They were virtually 

 invisible. The dark gray and yellowish brown dry 

 grass and stubble of the meadow-bottom were exactly 

 copied in the color of the half-fledged young. More 

 than that, they hugged the nest so closely and formed 

 such a compact mass, that though there were five of 

 them, they preserved the unit of expression, no 

 single head or form was defined ; they were one, and 

 that one was without shape or color, and not sepa- 

 rable, except by closest scrutiny, from the one of the 

 meadow-bottom. That nest prospered, as bobolinks' 

 nests doubtless generally do ; for, notwithstanding the 

 enormous slaughter of the birds during their fall mi- 

 grations by Southern sportsmen, the bobolink appears 

 to hold its own, and its music does not diminish in our 

 Northern meadows. 



Birds with whom the struggle for life is the sharpest 

 seem to be more prolific than those whose nest and 

 young are exposed to fewer dangers. The robin, the 

 sparrow, the pewee, etc., will rear, or make the at- 

 tempt to rear, two and sometimes three broods in a 

 season ; but the bobolink, the oriole, the kingbird, the 

 goldfinch, the cedar-bird, the birds of prey, and the 

 woodpeckers, that build in safe retreats in the trunks 

 of trees, have usually but a single brood. If the bob- 

 olink reared two broods, our meadows would swarm 

 with them. 



I noted three nests of the cedar-bird in August in 

 a single orchard, all productive, but all with one or 



