^t Waxbltt 13 



ways does). There would be just the flick of a disturbed leaf ; then, silence 

 and stillness. It was hence not until the young Long-tailed Chats of my 

 lono--scrutinized pair were grown large, hungry and vociferous that the feed- 

 ing of them betrayed their home. 



Then there came to me, by way of compensation, a sheaf of rare ex- 

 periences. There is always a full measure of triumph in the way one finds 

 a nest, through the imperious, noisily-manifested hunger of fledgling birds ; 

 and then secretes himself, close by,— muttering, the while,—" Now I'll find 

 out things, — in spite of you both' 1 : and so you do! 



The nest lay fairly well-down in the forks of a sturdy rose-bush, right 

 in the middle of the patch, — (of course). It was rather a rude, coarse, Catbird- 

 nest-like basket. But it did ample duty for the lusty three young Chats. 



I found that, (apparently), the excrement of young Chats is not, ordinari- 

 ly, carried from the nest by the parents ; but is voided over one side of the 

 nest. The young, at least when fairly well-grown, seem to face always in 

 the opposite direction ; and to be fed, always, on that side. If the Long- 

 tailed Chat habitually carries food to the nest, not by flying over the sur- 

 rounding bushes but by creeping beneath them, — (as certainly did both the 

 parents under observation during the two hours of my studying of them), 



the discovery thus made was well worth the pound of flesh I sacrificed, 



then and there, to the deer-flies that unerringly searched me out as I lay 

 among the rose bushes, camera bulb in hand : waiting for opportunities that 

 were never afforded me. Despairing of this ruse, I gave up the effort to 

 secure either parent Chat upon a photographic plate ; and crept, swiftly, 

 while both parents were away, grubbing, to a remote vantage-ground for 

 watching. No use! The ordinary shrill, nasal,— " Zhabe"— call of the 

 Chats,— (softened to a rather tender, " Urv", as the parent, with a beakful 

 of food, approached the nest, along the ground, beneath the rose-bushes — 

 would always, indeed, give me a clue to parental approach; but I only once, 

 —for a single swift moment,— detected either parent breaking cover. The 

 rule seemed invariably to be,— approach along the ground ; cautious re- 

 connoiter, at foot of the nest-bush, accompanied with soft calls to the young, 

 the while ; slow, devious mountings upward, of the food-bearer ; with, finally, 

 a swift delivery of a luscious grub into the immense chasm of some one of 

 the three baby mouths. 



The conduct of the young birds, as the parents drew near, along the 

 ground, with measured callings, was measurelessly amusing. The nearer 

 the parent came the wider open would fly the three great mouths ; the more 

 frantic would become the tiptoed cranings over the nest-edge ; and the more 

 crazilv imperious the trio of "Tsirips" with which the three frantically re- 

 sponded to the mother-call. As one habitually does, I fell to noting the 

 marks of sex-psychology, between the two parents, in case of this pair of 



