BIRD INTIMACIES 



low hedge of barberry-bushes on the south side of 

 the cottage, where a song sparrow had her nest. 

 If they come, which will they take, we wondered. 

 Several times in the early morning I heard the 

 male singing vivaciously and confidently in the 

 thick of the honeysuckle. I guessed that the 

 honeysuckle was the choice of the male, and that 

 his song was a paean in praise of it, addressed to 

 his mate. But it was nearly a week before his 

 musical argument prevailed and the site was ap- 

 parently agreed upon. 



When the nest-building actually began, the birds 

 were so shy about it that, watch as I might, I failed 

 to catch them in the act. One morning I saw the 

 mother bird in the garden with nesting-material 

 in her beak, but she failed to come to the honey- 

 suckle with it while I watched from a near-by 

 covert. At the same time robins were flying here 

 and there with loaded beaks, and wood thrushes 

 were going through the air trailing long strips of 

 white paper behind them, but the catbird was an 

 emblem of secrecy itself. She, too, brought frag- 

 ments of white paper to her nest, but no one saw 

 her do it. Like other nest-builders, she apparently 

 put in her big strokes of work in the early morning 

 before the sleepers on the veranda were stirring. 

 A few times my inquisitive eye, cautiously peering 

 over the railing, started her from the vine, but I 

 never saw her enter it with leaf, stick, or straw; 



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