VII 
BIRD’S-NESTING 
Ir is the best of all out-of-door sports bar none. 
The thrill of hidden treasure, the lure of adventure, 
the joy of escape from in-door days—all these are 
part of it. Try it of a May day, or before sunrise 
some June morning. I have a friend who leads « 
double life. During business hours he is the presi- 
dent of a bank. Outside of them he is the most 
abandoned bird’s-nester of my acquaintance. If 
his depositors could see their president going up the 
side of a perpendicular oak-tree with climbing-irons, 
to look at the dizzy home of a red-tail hawk, or pick- 
ing his way across bottomless bogs in search of the 
bittern’s nest, there would probably be a run on his 
bank. 
I know a woman seventy-two years young, who 
took up bird’s-nesting in order to help forget a great 
sorrow. While her contemporaries are dozing their 
lives away in caps and easy-chairs, she is afield in 
all sorts of weather, and sees more birds and finds 
more nests in a year than the average woman meets 
in a lifetime. Incidentally she gets more health and 
happiness out of life than any woman of her age 
whom I have ever met. 
Another woman, in a little town in New Jersey, 
by the sudden death of her husband was left alone 
