56 Bird Comrades 



head close to the grassy bottom, as if she thought she 

 would be safe if her head were hidden. Thinking she must 

 have little ones, or she would not cling so tenaciously 

 to the nest, I pushed my finger under her and partly 

 raised her from her seat. Even this rude treatment she 

 bore for a few moments but it was going too far even 

 for her courageous little heart; she lifted her head, 

 glanced wildly at me for an intense moment, then "sprang 

 from the cavity with a piercing cry. 



Imagine my surprise to find the nest entirely empty, 

 not even an egg having yet been deposited. The brave 

 little lady had doubtless just entered the nest to lay her 

 first egg, and was not going to be driven off without know- 

 ing the reason why. The tomtit is game every time. 



The entrance to most of the chickadee's nests is lateral, 

 but I found one nest whose doorway was in the top of a 

 fence post, so that the owners had to go down into it 

 vertically. The hole was quite deep, and the birds would 

 drop down into it as you have seen swifts dropping into 

 a chimney, but whether they went down head first or tail 

 first I could not learn, their movements were so quick. 

 Another feature of this nest was that it had no roof, for 

 the doorway was open to the sky, so that a cloudburst 

 would have filled up their little nursery and drowned its 

 inmates. 



