FAR AND NEAR 



easy, and flitted from bush to bush and uttered his 

 alarm chirp. The mother bird never stirred. I could 

 see her loaded beak from where I sat. In two or 

 three minutes she dropped or otherwise disposed of 

 her morsel, but kept her place above her young. 

 Then her mate, taking his cue from her, quieted 

 down and soon disappeared from view. 



After long waiting I approached the nest, and 

 pausing ten feet away, regarded it some moments. 

 The bird never stirred. Then I came nearer, and 

 when I sat down w ithin four or five feet of the nest, 

 the bird flew out upon the ground before me, and 

 sought to lure me away by practicing the old confi- 

 dence game that birds so often resort to on such 

 occasions. 



She was seized with incipient paralysis in her 

 members ; she dragged herself about upon the 

 ground ; she quivered and tottered and panted with 

 open beak, and seemed on the point of going all to 

 pieces. Seeing this game did not work and that I 

 remained unmoved, she suddenly changed her tac- 

 tics ; she flew up to a limb and gave me a piece of her 

 mind in no equivocal terms. This brought the male, 

 and true to his name, he had a worm in his beak. 



Both now joined in the scolding, and the rumpus 

 attracted a vireo to the spot, who came to see what 

 the danger really w^as. But evidently the warblers 

 regarded his presence as an intrusion. 



The nest was in the edge of the bank where the 



198 



