NEAR VIEWS OF WILD LIFE 



thrill when in his walk he comes upon one of their 

 nests? He has found a thing of art among the un- 

 kempt and the disorderly; he has found a thing of 

 life and love amid the cold and the insensate. Yet 

 all so artless and natural! Every shred and straw 

 of it serves a purpose; it fairly warms and vivifies 

 the little niche in which it is placed. What a center 

 of solicitude and forethought. 



Not many yards below the vesper's nest, on the 

 other side of the road, is a junco's nest. You may 

 know the junco's nest from that of any other 

 ground-builder by its being more elaborate and 

 more perfectly hidden. The nest is tucked far under 

 the mossy and weedy bank, and only a nest-hunter 

 passing along the road, with "eye practiced like a 

 blind man's touch" and with juncos in mind, would 

 have seen it. A little screen of leaves of the hawk- 

 weed permits only the rim of one edge of the nest 

 to be seen. Not till I stooped down and reached 

 forth my hand did the mother bird come fluttering 

 out and go down the road with drooping wings and 

 spread tail, the white quills of the latter fairly 

 lighting up the whole performance. 



A very shy and artful bird is the junco. I had 

 had brief glimpses of the male many times about the 

 place. The morning I found the nest I had seen 

 one male spitefully pursuing another male along 

 the top of the stone wall opposite, which fact, 

 paralleled in a human case, would afford a hint for 



81 



