But he takes family matters seriously, and with- 

 draws so quietly to the unfrequented parts of the 

 woods during nesting- time as to seem to have 

 migrated. Yet of the four chickadees' nests 

 found about the house, one was in a dead yellow 

 birch in a bit of deep swamp, two others were in 

 yellow birches along wood-roads, and the fourth 

 was in a rotten fence-post by the main road, a 

 long way from any trees. 



A workman while mending the fence discov- 

 ered this last nest. The post crumbled in his 

 hands as he tried to pull it down, revealing the 

 nest of moss and rabbit hair, with its five brown- 

 and-white eggs. He left the old post, propped 

 it up with a sound one, and, mending the broken 

 walls of the cavity the best he could, hurried 

 along with his task, that the birds might return. 

 They came back, found the wreckage of dust and 

 chips covering the eggs, tried the flimsy walls 

 and went away. It was a desecrated home, nei- 

 ther safe nor beautiful now ; so they forsook it. 



There is no eagle's nest in this collection of 



thirty-six. But if Mr. Burroughs is correct, 



there is the next thing to it a humming-bird's 



nest ; three of them, indeed, one of which is 



[162] 



