40 PROCEEDINGS OP THE 



web of the caterpillar is also used. It lines freely with feathers, 

 using a respectable quantity of horsehair and dead tops of sedge 

 also. The bottom consists mostly of feathers, and on the whole 

 is quite warm and neatly built." My nest differs from this and 

 from all other descriptions I have read in that there is not a 

 a feather used within or without. Instead, silky fuzz of the 

 nature of thistledown has been employed, giving the interior 

 the appearance of a Goldfinch's nest. It is securely perched on 

 a cross formed by two small branchlets, which jut out at right 

 angles to the main branch, and is held upright by pine spills 

 woven into the sides. Three inches of depth inside provide 

 further security for the contents when rocked by the strong 

 shore winds. The eggs, four in number, are exquisitely marked 

 with spots of brown and blotches of lilac and mauve. Though 

 smaller and not quite so heavily spotted, they closely resemble 

 a set of Vesper Sparrow's eggs I possess. 



Mr. Ora Willis Knight, in the ' ' Birds of Maine, ' ' states that 

 the nests he has seen were " placed invariably in smallish pines 

 at the edge of the taller pines and deep woods in an old clearing 

 or opening on a side hill." This nest too was placed in an 

 opening where a few pines divide the grasses from the swamp. 

 The tree containing the nest stands alone, prominently apart 

 from other large trees. A few feet south of it the grasses and 

 goldenrods stop and impenetrable thickets begin. Such places 

 have a charm of contrast, and one prefers to think that birds 

 who "invariablj^ " choose them possess some esthetic feeling. 

 As I held the wheel that night whirling through fifty-three 

 miles of darkness the day's incidents passed before me. Kalei- 

 doscopic visions hurtled each other through my brain, of inter- 

 minable swamps and pulling thickets, and especially of one tree 

 on the border of swamp and grassland slanting obliquely 

 upward into the sun. 



