116 NORTH CAROLINA 



eye upon the nest. My ear, as it happened, 

 had marked the spot precisely. " Here it 

 is," I thought, and in a fraction of a minute 

 more the anxious mother showed herself, 



— a snowbird. The nest looked somewhat 

 larger than those I had seen in New Hamp- 

 shire, but that may have been a fault of 

 memory.^ It contained young birds and a 

 single egg. I was in great luck, I said to 

 myself; but in truth, as a longer experi- 

 ence showed, the birds were so numerous all 

 about me that it would have been no very 

 difficult undertaking to find a nest or two 

 almost any day. 



Birds which had been isolated (separated 

 from the parent stock) long enough to have 

 taken on some constant physical peculiarity 



— without which they could not be entitled 

 to a distinctive name, though it were only a 

 third one — might be presumed to have ac- 

 quired at the same time some slight but real 

 idiosyncrasy of voice and language. But if 

 this is true of the Carolina junco, I failed to 

 satisfy myself of the fact. On the first day, 



1 My first impression was correct. Mr. Brewster, as I 

 now notice, says of the nest that it is " larger and com- 

 posed of coarser material " than that of Junco hyemalis. 



