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An Unusual Site for a Chewink's Nest 



Late in June, as I walked through the 

 woods, I heard a sudden scurry among 

 dead leaves, and then chewink, towhee, 

 on all sides at once, apparently, resounded 

 in the thicket. And there was a female 

 Chewink with dead grass in her bill, sur- 

 prised at her nest-building. Close by was 

 her mate, and nearer, in a small hemlock, 

 about two feet from the ground, in plain 

 sight, was a partly finished nest of dead 

 leaves, grass, and roots. I retired from 

 their vociferous alarm, and in a day or 

 two returned to find the nest completed — 

 a rather bulky, loosely built affair, 

 with one egg in it. To this two 

 more were added, bluish tinged, 

 spotted with brown. I visited it fre- 

 quently during incubation, without 

 disturbing the sitting bird, always 

 finding the male singing his nesting 

 song in a tree close by. They did 

 not show alarm, as I did not too 

 closely approach the nest. I intended 

 to photograph the nest, with the eggs 

 or mother, but time passed quickly, 

 and there were three naked, ugly 

 little birds with wide-open mouths, 

 which the mother bird was assiduously 

 filling, while the male sang from his tree, 

 but at no time, in several visits, offered 

 to feed them. 



It was certainly not over a week after 

 I had found them hatched that the nest 

 was empty, and I felt sure that they could 

 not have matured sufficiently to leave the 

 nest, ' but that they were destroyed on 

 account of its unusually exposed site. 

 I did not see or hear anything of the old 

 birds in the vicinity. 



Other Chewinks had been feeding their 

 young two weeks earlier, and it occurred 

 to me that this one may have been belated 

 by having used equally poor judgment in 

 the location of a previous nest. I had 

 always found a Chewink's nest on the 

 ground, and then only with great diffi- 



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culty, after many vain hunts. I had a 

 photograph made of the empty nest, 

 thinking it might interest someone else. — 

 Anne E. Perkins, Gowanda, N. Y. 



Hawk and Snake 



While riding along the shore of a lake 

 not far from here, I saw a Hawk drop not 

 twenty feet from me, and rode up to see 

 the cause of it. The Hawk had caught a 

 3-foot black snake, and the snake, in 

 turn, had wound itself around the Hawk's 

 neck. I watched them fight for ten min- 

 utes, and, as the Hawk seemed to be 



HAWK AND BLACK SNAKE IN COMBAT 



getting the worst of it (and I "raise some 

 chickens), I left them to fight it out. — Wm. 

 E. Herron, Inverness, Fla. 



The Mockingbird at Boston, Mass. 



On Thursday morning, January 2, I 

 went on a trip to Jamaica Pond, which is 

 in the Boston Park district. My purpose 

 was to study the ducks that stopped 

 there on their migrations, remaining there 

 until it freezes. 



On the way out, I could hear many 

 Chickadees flying overhead and in the 

 branches of the surrounding trees, and 

 now and then a Blue Jay from the other 

 side of the pond. 



When not quite halfway to my desti- 

 nation, I noticed a grayish bird that 



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