30 MY STUDIO NEIGHBORS 



Upon the first arrival of the birH in the spring 

 an attentive ear might detect its uiscordant voice, 

 or the chuckling note of his mischievous spouse 

 and accomplice, in the great bird medley ; but 

 later her crafty instinct would seem to warn her 

 that silence is more to her interest in the pursuit 

 of her wily mission. In June, when so many an 

 ecstatic love-song among the birds has modulated 

 from accents of ardent love to those of glad fru- 

 ition, when the sonnet to his " mistress's eye- 

 brow" is shortly to give place to the lullaby, then, 

 like the "worm i' the bud," the cow-bird begins 

 her parasitical career. How many thousands are 

 the bird homes which are blasted in her " annual 

 visit?" 



Stealthily and silently she pries among the 

 thickets, following up the trail of warbler, sparrow, 

 or thrush like a sleuth - hound. Yonder a tiny 

 yellow-bird with a jet-black cheek flits hither with 

 a wisp of dry grass in her beak, and disappears in 

 the branches of a small tree close to my studio 

 door. Like the shadow of fate the cow-bird sud- 

 denly appears, and has doubtless soon ferreted 

 out her cradle. 



In a certain grassy bank not far from where I 

 am writing, at the foot of an unsuspecting fern, a 

 song-sparrow has built her nest. It lies in a hoi- 



