94 EVERYDAY ADVENTURES 
I watched a field sparrow fly down under a hardhack 
bush with a bug in its beak. Hurrying there, I 
found on the ground, concealed by the bush, her 
little nest of woven grass, with four little field 
sparrows inside, whose gaping beaks kept both father 
and mother field sparrow busy all day to fill them. 
As the parent birds flitted around me, I could see 
plainly the pink beak which distinguishes the field 
sparrow from all others of its family. Beside the 
brook, among the cat-tails on the ground, I found 
the rough nest of the red-winged blackbird, with its 
four eggs scrawled with strange black hieroglyphics. 
The fourth day was another treasure-trove day. 
Just at dawn, in a dew-drenched thicket of spirea, 
I found three nests not six feet apart. In one, root- 
lined and thatched with strips of grape-vine bark, 
glowed the four deep blue eggs of the cat bird. 
The next nest, singularly deep and made of dried 
grass, was owned by a black-blue indigo bunting 
who, in spite of his intense coloring, seemed con- 
tent with three washed-out white eggs and a light- 
brown wife. On the last nest the bird was brooding, 
and showed the golden-crowned head and the chest- 
nut band along the side which has given its name to 
the chestnut-sided warbler. The nest, a humble 
affair of grass and hair, sheltered four wonderful 
eggs, pink-white, spotted at the largest end with 
flecks of chocolate and lilac and umber. Back of 
the thickets tottered an old, old house. For fifty 
years it had been leased to the wild-folk. As I looked 
at it, one of them flitted out of the cellar-way, a gray 
