156 Clear Skies and Cloudy. 



that is needed is to keep your eyes in the di- 

 rection of home and close your ears to the 

 birds about you. Not overburdened with the 

 nuts I had picked up, and with less rain to 

 annoy, I attempted cataloguing the newly found 

 empty nests, and found still others. Here was 

 severe snubbing, for I have always been proud 

 of my powers of observation. I must have 

 mistaken for a spider's web, heavy with dust, a 

 nest of a little flycatcher, and a downy wood- 

 pecker must have been mottled lichen only 

 when it was cutting out a brand-new nest in a 

 little tree. Where were all the cat-birds when 

 I was here in June ? I trust to having my eyes 

 more widely open in the coming year, and my 

 ears more quick to catch each passing note. I 

 have said this before. But if humiliating to 

 take a walk in October, it is also instructive. A 

 careful study of empty nests in leafless trees 

 will teach us how to look and where to look 

 when the nest-building season comes again, and 

 no one has yet determined just how far old 

 nests are utilized in the construction of new 

 ones. I have known a new nest to be built 

 within three feet of one of the preceding year, 



