LEAF AND TENDRIL 



young birds, as doubtless the owls do by night. 

 The mother bird flies at their approach, and leaves 

 her eggs or young to be devoured. The sitting bird 

 usually is not visible to an enemy passing in the air 

 above, as she is hidden by the leaves. In the care 

 of the young the male is as active and as much ex- 

 posed to danger as is the female, and in the case of 

 the scarlet tanager the male seems the bolder and 

 the more active of the two; yet the female, because 

 of her obscure coloring, could afford to run many 

 more chances than he. 



With the ground-builders the case is not much 

 different. These birds are preyed upon by prowlers, 

 — skunks, weasels, rats, snakes, crows, minks, 

 foxes, and cats, — enemies that hunt at close 

 range by night and by day, and that search the 

 ground by sight and by smell. It is not the parent 

 bird, but the eggs and the young, that they capture. 

 Indeed, I cannot see that the color of the sitting 

 bird enters into the problem at all. Red or white 

 or blue would not endanger the nest any more than 

 would the neutral grays and browns. The bobolink 

 builds in meadows where the grass alone conceals 

 it. That the back of the sitting bird harmonizes 

 perfectly with the meadow bottom might make a 

 difference to the egg-collector, or to an eye a few feet 

 above, but not to the mink, or the skunk, or the snake, 

 or the fox, that came nosing about the very spot. 



Last summer I saw where a woodcock had made 

 74 



