OF THE UNITED STATES 357 



I never knew of but one case where this bird built upon level 

 ground, and where there was not an abundance of dead leaves 

 about. My observations, however, have been confined to New 

 England, and south to southern Maryland. Then, too, the side 

 entrance to this nest faced nearly north, while, I am given to un- 

 derstand, they usually build so as to have this opening_face the 

 south. 



The presence of the nest was first suspected by my son, by his 

 seeing the female spring up suddenly only a foot or so in front 

 of him, and run like a mouse over the ground and then disappear 

 in the underbrush. After a search of several minutes I found the 

 nest, and it certainly was one of the most skillfully concealed 

 structures of the kind one could imagine. Built flush with the 

 level of the ground, the nest itself was composed of dry leaves, 

 fine dry grass, a few pine needles, and sparsely lined with horse- 

 hair. Dry leaves and fine dry grass were also used to construct 

 a dome that completely arched over the nest proper, the former 

 having been built around the stem of a small maple about a foot 

 high, that had every appearance of having sprouted out of the 

 top of the arch. But what made the deception still more perfect 

 was the fact that the entire affair was built beneath some large 

 chestnut leaves and pine needles, that still remained attached to 

 some small dead limbs on the ground. In short, the whole nest 

 with its dome was in complete harmony with the little low 

 plants, moss, dead leaves, and twigs that surrounded it all about. 

 It contained five eggs, almost incubated. These were nearly uni- 

 form both in size and color; one of them I find measuring about 

 .80 by .60, being white and meagerly speckled over with pale red- 

 dish brown, but chiefly in a broad, well-defined band near the 

 larger end. A few large lilac spots are also to be seen, but chiefly 

 in the aforesaid bands. 



One afternoon about 3 o'clock, several days afterward, I took 

 my camera over to the spot, and succeeded in getting a photo- 

 graph of this nest in situ, and the picture is reproduced in Fig. 88. 



Wilson, in speaking of this bird, says : " When alarmed, it 

 escapes from the nest with great silence and rapidly running 

 along the ground like a mouse, as if afraid to tread too heavily 

 on the leaves ; if you stop to examine its nest it also stops, droops 

 its wings, flutters and tumbles along, as if hardly able to crawl, 

 looking back now and then to see whether you are taking notice 

 of it. If you slowly follow, it leads you fifty or sixty yards off, 



