120 Bird- Lore 



The witchery of a wild regret, 



Vibrant, monotonous and weary 



With hopeless longing to forget, 



Fell to your lot, my woodland Veery. 



Yon Tanagers are gay and red, 



Indigo blue the Bunting near them, 

 A yellow Warbler flits o'erhead; 



Their songs and plumage both endear them. 

 The Veery's coat is dull and dun; 



He hides and stills his cry above you 

 At the least sound ; yet modest one, 



More than all other birds I love you. 



I love you, for anew you stir 



The old, inexplicable feeling. 

 I love you as interpreter 



Of mysteries upon me stealing. 

 I love you, for you give a tongue 



To silence. True, you are not cheery, 

 But where has any songster sung 



A note as weird as yours, my Veery ? 



The Nesting of the Yellow-throated Vireo 



BY JOHN HUTCHINS, Litchfield. Conn. 



YELLOW-THROATED VIREOS have more than once blessed 

 us by hanging their mossy choir-loft high in the fretwork which 

 overarches our own lower roof, and once the Warbling Vireo came 

 and reared her brood, so that we had antiphonal choirs. 



These nests were usually from forty to fifty feet above the ground. 

 We had often watched the building and brooding, both with glass and 

 the naked eye, and always had wished for a closer intimacy. So during 

 the early days of June, 1901, as if they had divined our wish, a pair of 

 Yellow -throats came and began their home-building just outside the sec- 

 ond-story hall window. The foundations of the tiny house were laid 

 on the second day of June. Foundations, I need hardly say, in this case, 

 as in that of all pensile or hanging nests, begin at the top, the bird work- 

 ing downward and completing her purse-like hammock as the knitter 

 does the toe of a stocking. We shall have occasion to notice more 

 about this later on. 



