<% HJarblrr 1? 



tween the survey of anxious bevies of Brewer Blackbirds and the findino- 

 of the first nest. Yet this was but one of several like surprises. 



One who never had the joy of fighting Red River mosquitoes for the 

 sake of all the bird-riches hidden in prairie and marsh must be told ; that 

 the under-growth of shrubbery, along the tributaries of the Red River are 

 fairly luxuriant. They are, moreover, never burned-over. Here, then are 

 paradox, — and difficulty. Only by dint of heeding the " hot " and "cold " 

 cries of attendant Brewer Blackbirds, whose meaning had all been fathom- 

 ed through much of greatly intimate and critical sturdy, did I actually find 

 — without flushing a sitting bird, — a nest like that in Photograph II. It 

 lay deep in a mass of green hazels and oaks ; well ensconced amono- thick 



BREWERS BLACKBIRD AT BASE OF WILLOW 



layers of dead leaf. In astonishing contrast with the mere mats of root- 

 let which formed excuse for nests in the hollows scratched on the bare, 

 burned ground of the meadows, these nests amid the leaves were fairh well- 

 made ; having grass and weeds inwrought into the fabrics. In northeastern 

 Wyoming the Brewer Blackbird is quite as erratic and as truly gregarious 

 as in the prairie-woodland regions of the middle West. A simulation of 

 the woodland site I found, late in the season ; after the locating of several 

 pairs along a steep little gully well fringed with shrubbery, leading up to 

 Sundance Mountain, had yielded nothing to my search. But finally, quite 

 as a matter of pique, I set to work to find the nest of at least one of the 



