128 BIRDS'-NESTS. 



brink of a low, mossy bank, so near the highway that 

 it could be reached from a passing vehicle with a whip. 

 Every horse or wagon or foot passenger disturbs the 

 sitting bird. She awaits the near approach of the 

 sound of feet or wheels, and then darts quickly across 

 the road, barely clearing the ground, and disappears 

 amid the bushes on the opposite side. 



In the trees that line one of the main streets and 

 fashionable drives leading out of Washington city, 

 and less than half a mile from the boundary, I have 

 counted the nests of five different species at one time, 

 and that without any very close scrutiny of the foliage, 

 while in many acres of woodland, half a mile off, I 

 searched in vain for a single nest. Among the five 

 the nest that interested me most was that of the blue 

 grossbeak. Here this bird, which, according to Au- 

 dubon's observations in Louisiana, is shy and recluse, 

 affecting remote marshes and the borders of large 

 ponds of stagnant water, had placed its nest in the 

 lowest twig of the lowest branch of a large sycamore, 

 immediately over a great thoroughfare, and so near 

 the ground that a person standing in a cart or sitting 

 on a horse could have reached it with his hand. The 

 nest was composed mainly of fragments of newspaper 

 and stalks of grass, and though so low, was remark- 

 ably well concealed by one of the peculiar clusters of 

 twigs and leaves which characterize this tree. The 

 nest contained young when I discovered it, and 

 though the parent birds were much annoyed by my 

 loitering about beneath the tree, they paid little atten- 



