92 EVERYDAY ADVENTURES 
was the last morning of my stay, and I had been 
making my round of nests, examining each one and 
beginning the bird-notes which I have kept up ever 
since. As I pulled the nest down and looked at the 
three eggs, I suddenly saw a tiny black speck appear 
out of the side of one. Then the shell cracked and 
split, and I realized that what I had seen was the 
beak of the little bird within. In a moment the 
crack spread, and finally, with a tremendous effort, 
one half of the blue shell slid off and there in front 
of me, snugly resting in the other half of the shell, 
was the naked baby-thrush, its long neck curled down 
beside its round stomach. Raising its blind head, 
it pressed against the confining shell, while its whole 
bare body shook with the heart-throbs of a new life. 
I realized that before my eyes this bare, blind bird 
was passing from one world into another; and when 
the birth was finally accomplished and, free from 
the prisoning shell, the little thrush lay panting on 
the bottom of the soft nest, I turned away with a 
certain sense of uplift that I had watched a fellow 
creature win a battle for a higher life. 
It was another wood thrush’s nest that same week, 
in the deep of a thicket, that gave me still another 
experience. The nest was in a tiny bush much 
lower than J have ever found a wood thrush’s nest 
since. When the mother thrush left the nest, she 
wasted no time in idle alarm-notes, but, circling 
around the bush, flew straight for my face. I ducked, 
and she went over me, only to turn and come back; 
and if I had not guarded myself by striking at her 
