94 EVERYDAY ADVENTURES 



I watched a field sparrow fly down under a hardhack 

 bush with a bug in its beak. Hurrying there, I 

 found on the ground, concealed by the bush, her 

 little nest of woven grass, with four little field 

 sparrows inside, whose gaping beaks kept both father 

 and mother field sparrow busy all day to fill them. 

 As the parent birds flitted around me, I could see 

 plainly the pink beak which distinguishes the field 

 sparrow from all others of its family. Beside the 

 brook, among the cat-tails on the ground, I found 

 the rough nest of the red-winged blackbird, with its 

 four eggs scrawled with strange black hieroglyphics. 

 The fourth day was another treasure-trove day. 

 Just at dawn, in a dew-drenched thicket of spirea, 

 I found three nests not six feet apart. In one, root- 

 lined and thatched with strips of grape-vine bark, 

 glowed the four deep blue eggs of the cat bird. 

 The next nest, singularly deep and made of dried 

 grass, was owned by a black-blue indigo bunting 

 who, in spite of his intense coloring, seemed con- 

 tent with three washed-out white eggs and a light- 

 brown wife. On the last nest the bird was brooding, 

 and showed the golden-crowned head and the chest- 

 nut band along the side which has given its name to 

 the chestnut-sided warbler. The nest, a humble 

 affair of grass and hair, sheltered four wonderful 

 eggs, pink-white, spotted at the largest end with 

 flecks of chocolate and lilac and umber. Back of 

 the thickets tottered an old, old house. For fifty 

 years it had been leased to the wild-folk. As I looked 

 at it, one of them flitted out of the cellar-way, a gray 



