THE MARSH DWELLERS 167 



any ground birds that might be nesting within the 

 area covered by the fifty-foot cord. Our first haul 

 was a vesper sparrow's nest with one egg — the 

 bird breaking cover near my end. Later in the day 

 another of our party found a better nest of the same 

 bird in the middle of a field, made and lined with grass 

 and set in a little hollow in the ground. It held three 

 eggs of a bluish white, blotched and clouded with 

 umber and lavender at the larger ends. Two of the 

 eggs were marked with black hieroglyphics like 

 those seen in the eggs of an oriole or red-winged 

 blackbird. The vesper is that gray sparrow which 

 shows two white tail-feathers when it flies, and 

 sings an alto song whose first two notes are always 

 in a different key from the rest of the strain. 



In another field we flushed a bobolink. Unfortu- 

 nately the Artist, whose duty it was to watch the rope, 

 was at the moment gazing skywards at cloud-effects, 

 and though we burrowed and peered for a full hour 

 in the fragrant dripping grass, we never found 

 that nest. The home of a bobolink is one of the best 

 hidden of all of our common ground-builders. I re- 

 member one Decoration Day when I highly resolved 

 to find a bobolink 's nest in a field where several pairs 

 were nesting. Early in my hunt I decided that the 

 gay black-and-white males, which seemed to be fly- 

 ing and singing aimlessly, were really signaling my 

 approach to the females on the nests. At any rate, 

 the mother birds would rise far ahead as I came near, 

 evidently after having run for long distances through 

 the grass, and gave me no clue as to the whereabouts 



