88 EVERYDAY ADVENTURES 



woods and fields I might come upon other treasure- 

 hordes of the same kind. Then and there I became 

 a treasure-hunter. Ever since then I leave my treas- 

 ures where I find them, so that my recollections of 

 them may not be marred by any memories of 

 fluttering, mourning mother birds. Aside from any 

 sentimental reasons, it has always seemed to me that 

 he who takes the eggs which he has discovered is 

 guilty of the economic error of spending his princi- 

 pal. If left undisturbed, the nest will pay dividends 

 in the way of information and observations which 

 are worth more than the mere possession of the 

 pierced and empty eggs. 



All the time that I was studying this nest both the 

 parent birds were moving around me in anxious 

 circles. At times the mother bird would drop her 

 wings and scurry along just in front of me, pretending 

 that she was wounded nigh unto death and that, if 

 I would but follow her away from the nest, she 

 could easily be caught. Both the birds had brown 

 backs and buff breasts and sides spotted with black, 

 and constantly tilted their tails and walked instead 

 of hopping. As soon as I came back to the farmhouse, 

 I rummaged through colored charts and bird-books 

 until I had decided that the nest was that of a fox 

 sparrow, which also has a brown back and a spotted 

 breast. It was not until another year that I learned 

 that the fox sparrow nests in the far North and that 

 the bird whose home I had discovered was none other 

 than the oven-bird — or golden-crowned accentor, 

 to give him his more sonorous title. This is the bird 



