out at night. So these little spies start up 

 singing their biggest as a blind to their real 

 feelings and purposes. 



The quail's broken wings and rushes of blood 

 to the head during nesting-time have lost 

 their lure even for the small boy j yet they 

 somehow still work on me. I involuntarily 

 give my attention to this distress until too late 

 to catch sight of the scurrying brood. I ima- 

 gine, too, that the oldest and wisest of the foxes 

 is still fooled by this make-believe, and will 

 continue to be fooled to the end of time. 



A barren, stony hillside slopes gradually to 

 the marsh where the wrens live. Here I was 

 met by the fifth deceiver, a killdeer plover. 

 The killdeer's crocodile tears are bigger and 

 more touchingly genuine than even the quail's. 

 And, besides all her tricks, she has a voice that 

 fairly drips woe. 



The killdeer always builds in a worn-out, 

 pebbly pasture or in a bare, unused field. Here 

 among the stones she makes her nest by scrap- 

 ing out a shallow cavity, into which she scratches 

 a few bits of rotten wood and weed-stalks in 

 sizes that would make good timber for a caddis- 

 [202] 



