THE TRAGEDIES OF THE NESTS 83 



particular meadow-lily, I walked straight to the 

 spot, bent down, and gazed long and intently into 

 the grass. Finally my eye separated the nest and 

 its young from its surroundings. My foot had 

 barely missed them in my search, but by how much 

 they had escaped my eye I could not tell. Proba- 

 bly not by distance at all, but simply by unrecogni- 

 tion. 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 com- 

 pact 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 separable, 

 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 migrations by Southern sportsmen, the bobo- 

 link 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 attempt 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 



