A Family of Grosbeaks - 47 



looked to me as if they wanted their pictures taken. It 

 was too good a chance for us to miss. The ferns grew 

 almost as high as the nest, and it was a fine place to hide 

 the camera so as to focus it on the home. 



When I waded through the ferns and pushed aside the 

 bushes, the nest was brimful. Above the rim, I could 

 see the tiny plumes of white down wavering in a breath 

 of air that I couldn't feel. I stole up and looked in. The 

 three bantlings were sound asleep. Neither parent hap- 

 pened to be near, so I crawled back and hid well down 

 in the bushes twelve feet away. The father came in as 

 silently as a shadow and rested on the nest edge. He was 

 dressed like a prince, with a jet-black hat, black wings 

 crossed with bars of white, and the rich, red-brown of his 

 vest shading into lemon-yellow toward his tail. He 

 crammed something in each wide-opened mouth, stretched 

 at the end of a wiggling, quivering neck. The mother 

 followed without a word and sat looking about. She 

 treated each bobbing head in the same way. Then, with 

 head cocked on the side, she examined each baby, turning 

 him gently with her bill, and looked carefully to the needs 

 of all three before departing. 



The male stayed near the nest. When I arose and stood 

 beside the arrow-wood he was scared. " Quit ! Quit ! " 

 he cried, in a high, frightened tone, and when I didn't he 

 let out a screech of alarm that brought his wife in a hurry. 

 Any one would have thought I was thirsting for the life- 

 blood of those nestlings. She was followed by a pair of 

 robins, a yellow warbler and a flycatcher, all anxious 

 to take a hand in the owl-ousting if, indeed, an owl was 

 near. I have often noticed that all the feathered neigh- 



