GLIMPSES OF WILD LIFE 187 



Probably if I had kept the secret to myself, and let 

 the bird run her own risk, the nest would have es- 

 caped. But the result was that the man, in elabo- 

 rately trying to avoid the nest, overdid the matter; 

 the horse plunged, and set his foot squarely upon 

 it. Such a little spot, the chances were few that the 

 horse's foot would fall exactly there; and yet it did, 

 and the birds' hopes were again dashed. The pair 

 then disappeared from my vicinity, and I saw them 

 no more. 



The summer just gone I passed at a farmhouse on 

 the skirts of the Northern Catskills. How could 

 I help but see what no one else of all the people 

 about seemed to notice, — a little bob-tailed song 

 sparrow building her nest in a pile of dry brush very 

 near the kitchen door. It was late in July, and she 

 had doubtless reared one brood in the earlier sea- 

 son. Her toilet was decidedly the worse for wear. I 

 noted her day after day very busy about the fence 

 and quince bushes between the house and milk house 

 with her beak full of coarse straw and hay. To a 

 casual observer she seemed flitting about aimlessly, 

 carrying straws from place to place just to amuse 

 herself. When I came to watch her closely to learn 

 the place of her nest, she seemed to suspect my in- 

 tention and made many little feints and movements 

 calculated to put me off the track. But I would 

 not be misled, and presently had her secret. The 

 male did not assist her at all, but sang much of the 

 time in an apple-tree or upon the fence, on the other 

 side of the house. Those artists who paint pictures 



