VII 

 BIRD'S-NESTING 



IT is the best of all out-of-door sports bar none. 

 The thrill of hidden treasure, the lure of adventure, 

 the joy of escape from in-door days all these are 

 part of it. Try it of a May day, or before sunrise 

 some June morning. I have a friend who leads a 

 double life. During business hours he is the presi- 

 dent of a bank. Outside of them he is the most 

 abandoned bird 's-nester of my acquaintance. If 

 his depositors could see their president going up the 

 side of a perpendicular oak-tree with climbing-irons, 

 to look at the dizzy home of a red-tail hawk, or pick- 

 ing his way across bottomless bogs in search of the 

 bittern's nest, there would probably be a run on his 

 bank. 



I know a woman seventy-two years young, who 

 took up bird's-nesting in order to help forget a great 

 sorrow. While her contemporaries are dozing their 

 lives away in caps and easy-chairs, she is afield in 

 all sorts of weather, and sees more birds and finds 

 more nests in a year than the average woman meets 

 in a lifetime. Incidentally she gets more health and 

 happiness out of life than any woman of her age 

 whom I have ever met. 



Another woman, in a little town in New Jersey, 

 by the sudden death of her husband was left alone 



