12 EVERYDAY ADVENTURES 



started me on another of the games of solitaire which 

 I like to play out-of-doors, and I tried to see how 

 many nests I could discover from the same vantage- 

 point without moving. This is really a good way to 

 find birds' nests, and the one who stands still and 

 watches the birds will often find more than he who 

 beats about. For a long time the robin's nest was the 

 only one on my list. At last the flashing orange and 

 black of a Baltimore oriole betrayed its gray swing- 

 ing pouch of a nest in a nearby spruce tree — the only 

 time that I have ever seen an oriole's nest in an ever- 

 green tree. In a lilac bush I saw the deep nest of the 

 catbird, with its four vivid blue eggs and the in- 

 evitable grapevine-bark lining around its edge. 



In a high fork in a great maple tree at the corner 

 of the road, the chebec, or least flycatcher, showed me 

 her home. Sooner or later, if you watch any of the 

 flycatchers long enough, they will generally show you 

 their nests. This one was high up in a fork, and made 

 of string and wool and down. Over in the adjoining 

 orchard I saw a kingbird light on her nest in the very 

 top of an apple tree; and I have no doubt that, if I 

 had climbed up to it, I would have seen three beauti- 

 ful cream- white eggs blotched with chocolate-brown. 



The last nest of all was my treasure nest of the 

 summer. I was about to give up the game and start 

 off for a walk, when suddenly, right ahead of me, 

 hanging on the limb of a sugar-maple, not five feet 

 above the stone wall, I saw the swinging basket-nest 

 of a vireo, with the woven white strips of birch-bark 

 on the outside which all vireos use in that part of the 



