88 EVERYDAY ADVENTURES 
woods and fields I might come upon other treasure- 
hordes of the same kind. Then and there I became 
a treasure-hunter. Ever since then I leave my treas- 
ures where I find them, so that my recollections of 
them may not be marred by any memories of 
fluttering, mourning mother birds. Aside from any 
sentimental reasons, it has always seemed to me that 
he who takes the eggs which he has discovered is 
guilty of the economic error of spending his princi- 
pal. If left undisturbed, the nest will pay dividends 
in the way of information and observations which 
are worth more than the mere possession of the 
pierced and empty eggs. 
All the time that I was studying this nest both the 
parent birds were moving around me in anxious 
circles. At times the mother bird would drop her 
wings and scurry along just in front of me, pretending 
that she was wounded nigh unto death and that, if 
I would but follow her away from the nest, she 
could easily be caught. Both the birds had brown 
backs and buff breasts and sides spotted with black, 
and constantly tilted their tails and walked instead 
of hopping. As soon as I came back to the farmhouse, 
I rummaged through colored charts and bird-books 
until I had decided that the nest was that of a fox 
sparrow, which also has a brown back and a spotted 
breast. It was not until another year that I learned 
that the fox sparrow nests in the far North and that 
the bird whose home I had discovered was none other 
than the oven-bird — or golden-crowned accentor, 
to give him his more sonorous title. This is the bird 
