92 EVERYDAY ADVENTURES 



was the last morning of my stay, and I had been 

 making my round of nests, examining each one and 

 beginning the bird-notes which I have kept up ever 

 since. As I pulled the nest down and looked at the 

 three eggs, I suddenly saw a tiny black speck appear 

 out of the side of one. Then the shell cracked and 

 split, and I realized that what I had seen was the 

 beak of the little bird within. In a moment the 

 crack spread, and finally, with a tremendous effort, 

 one half of the blue shell slid off and there in front 

 of me, snugly resting in the other half of the shell, 

 was the naked baby-thrush, its long neck curled down 

 beside its round stomach. Raising its blind head, 

 it pressed against the confining shell, while its whole 

 bare body shook with the heart-throbs of a new life. 

 I realized that before my eyes this bare, blind bird 

 was passing from one world into another; and when 

 the birth was finally accomplished and, free from 

 the prisoning shell, the little thrush lay panting on 

 the bottom of the soft nest, I turned away with a 

 certain sense of uplift that I had watched a fellow 

 creature win a battle for a higher life. 



It was another wood thrush 's nest that same week, 

 in the deep of a thicket, that gave me still another 

 experience. The nest was in a tiny bush much 

 lower than I have ever found a wood thrush's nest 

 since. When the mother thrush left the nest, she 

 wasted no time in idle alarm-notes, but, circling 

 around the bush, flew straight for my face. I ducked, 

 and she went over me, only to turn and come back; 

 and if I had not guarded myself by striking at her 



