FIELD AND STUDY 



destroy. What trust, what peril, what artless art 

 it all suggests! The April or May day when I find 

 a song sparrow's nest has a touch that the other 

 days do not have; and if a spring goes by without 

 my finding one or more, I miss something from my 

 life. It is not usually by searching that we find a 

 sparrow's nest; it is by accident, or by watchful 

 waiting. 



The past season I found my first treasure by 

 watchful waiting. I have found scores of the nests 

 of this familiar dooryard songster, but none that 

 ever gave me more pleasure than this one. The 

 cautious little ground-builder betrayed the secret 

 of her nest to me when, humanly speaking, she 

 thought she was securely keeping it. I knew there 

 was a nest near my study by the song of the male 

 on the trees and bushes around me, and had made 

 some search for it, but without avail. One must first 

 have some sort of a clue to a nest. As I sat here in 

 the summer-house one afternoon with only the 

 most vague thoughts about birds, I chanced to see 

 a song sparrow flit out of the grass near the border 

 of the just-ploughed vineyard, alight upon the 

 freshly turned earth, and in a fussy, nervous way 

 go hunting about for food. Have you ever seen a 

 setting hen come off the nest to feed, and noted how 

 she fluffs out her feathers, flirts her tail, and hurries 

 about as if in ill-humor? My little hen sparrow acted 

 in the same way, and I instantly inferred that she 



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