222 



SHARP EYES 



vireo. This bird has been called the "preacher" by 

 Wilson Flagg, a close bird observer, who had noted 

 the peculiar, continuous, deliberate song-sermon of the 

 bird in the tree-top. Remembering this, I was led to 

 scan with curiosity, as I had often done in previous 

 nests, the text of these weather-beaten waifs of news. 

 There were about a dozen pieces in all. In most of 

 them the print was worn and illegible, and in others so 

 fragmentary as to be without sense. But at length I 

 came upon the sentiment which I have here reproduced 

 f by photography, 



the only single 

 perfect sentence 

 to be found in 

 all the print 

 my "preacher's" 

 text " have in 

 view the will of 

 God." 



But I have not 

 begun to men- 

 tion all the curi- 

 ous things that 

 are woven into a 



vireo's fabric. These nests are the " samplers " of nat- 

 ure's nest textiles, and each one may have a new sur- 

 prise for us. I once found one which was decorated 

 with a hundred or more black spiny caterpillar-skins. 

 Another showed the gauzy mitten of a toad. Another 

 a half-yard of lace edging. And only last year I dis- 

 covered the most singular specimen of all a real nov- 

 elty even for a vireo a nest almost entirely composed 

 of snake-skins. 



