BIRDS'-NESTS 



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 clear- 

 ing 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 grosbeak. Here this bird, 

 which, according to Audubon's observations in Lou- 

 isiana, 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 com- 

 posed mainly of fragments of newspaper and stalks 

 of grass, and, though so low, was remarkably 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 loiter- 

 ing about beneath the tree, they paid little atten- 

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