BIRD'S-NESTING 111 



with light rufous markings. It was so overshadowed 

 with wintergreen leaves and aronia and bunch- 

 berries that, even after the Artist had pointed out 

 the place to me, it was with very great difficulty that 

 I found it. 



As we crossed the marsh, I heard the song of the 

 olive-backed thrush, which sounds to me like a cross 

 between the notes of the wood thrush and the 

 strange harp-chords of the veery or Wilson thrush. 

 In another part of the bog sang the rare Nashville 

 warbler, whose nest we have yet to find. Its song 

 starts like the creak of the black-and-white warbler 

 and ends like a chipping sparrow. In a marsh be- 

 yond the sphagnum bog, I found the nest of a Mary- 

 land yellowthroat, set in a yellow viburnum shrub 

 some six inches from the ground. This nest is usually 

 on the ground. It was set just as a gem is set in a 

 ring, the setting consisting of leaves which come up 

 into five or six points. Held by the points is a little 

 cup of grass. The eggs were the most beautiful we 

 saw that day — of a pinkish- white with a wreath of 

 chestnut blotches around the larger end. On the far- 

 ther side of the marsh, a white-throated sparrow flew 

 out from in front of me; and after a long search I 

 found its nest — a little moss-rimmed cup of gray- 

 green, yellow grass, containing four eggs of a faint 

 blue clouded with chestnut, which was massed in 

 large blotches at the larger end. With the four eggs 

 was a dumpy young cow-bird, that fatal changeling 

 which is the death of so many little birds. In this 

 case we saved four prospective white-throated spar- 



