UNDER THE MAPLES 



detectives to work on. The junco is evidently a 

 very successful bird. The swarms of them that 

 one sees in the late fall and in the early winter going 

 south is good evidence of this. They usually precede 

 the white-throats north in the spring, but a few 

 linger and breed in the high altitude of the Catskills. 



When the sun shines hot the sparrow in front of 

 my door makes herself into a sunshade to pro- 

 tect her nestlings. She pants with the heat, and 

 her young pant too; they would probably perish 

 were not the direct rays of the sun kept from them. 

 Another vesper sparrow's nest yonder in the hill 

 pasture, from which we flushed the bird in our walk, 

 might be considered in danger from a large herd of 

 dairy cows, but it is wisely placed in view of such a 

 contingency. It is at the foot of a stalk of Canada 

 thistle about a foot and a half high, and where, for a 

 few square yards, the grazing is very poor. I do 

 not think that the chances are one in fifty that the 

 hoof of a cow will find it. I do not suppose that 

 the problem presented itself to the bird as it does to 

 me, but her instinct was as sure a guide as my 

 reason is to me or a surer one. 



The vesper sparrow was thus happily named by 

 a New England bird-lover, Wilson Flagg, an old- 

 fashioned writer on our birds, fifty or more years 

 ago. I believe the bird was called the grass finch by 

 our earlier writers. It haunts the hilly pastures 

 and roadsides in the Catskill region. It is often 



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