WHAT I HAVE DONE WITH BIRDS 



the valley and there were many pools that lay filled throughout 

 the summer. 



In all the surrounding country, here was the one spot exactly 

 filling the requirements of an ideal location for Wood Thrushes ; 

 and when those notes of bell-toned sweetness sounded, evening 

 after evening, from the same tree, it was evident that somewhere 

 in the shrubs beneath that divine singer there brooded a bright- 

 eyed brown-coated mate to whom he was pouring out his heart in 

 notes of tenderness and cheer. 



The next morning, traveling east an hour earlier than usual 

 and hitching my little black horse to a telephone pole on the levee, 

 I climbed down the embankment. My way in the thicket could 

 be made only by stooping beneath the branches and creeping be- 

 tween bushes, and sometimes using my hatchet to get through at 

 all. My feet sank deep into the damp muck beneath the thick 

 layer of dead leaves; there were many small pools to skirt and 

 once my course changed entirely, because a great flood of a few 

 months previous had filled the whole valley with one broad raging 

 torrent that overwashed the levee. Lodged in underbrush were a 

 drowned cow and some pigs. 



When the tree from which my bird had sung was located I 

 began searching about it, in an ever-widening circle, for the nest. 

 The first thing I found was a big carp, firmly impaled at the 

 height of my head on a thorn tree and dry as any herring an- 

 other result of the flood. My next find was the nest of a pair of 

 Rose-breasted Grosbeaks, which defied the rules of naturalists, be- 

 cause they didn't build in a wild grape-vine, where grape-vines 

 were plentiful, and they didn't build of last year's dried grape- 

 feelers, but of sticks and twigs. Then I found the largest ce- 

 cropia cocoon of my experience; in a few weeks there would 

 emerge from it a beautiful moth; but that was so high above 

 my head it could not be secured that morning. I got it a week 



