THE MARSH DWELLERS 167 
any ground birds that might be nesting within the 
area covered by the fifty-foot cord. Our first haul 
was a vesper sparrow’s nest with one egg — the 
bird breaking cover near my end. Later in the day 
another of our party found a better nest of the same 
bird in the middle of a field, made and lined with grass 
and set in a little hollow in the ground. It held three 
eggs of a bluish white, blotched and clouded with 
umber and lavender at the larger ends. Two of the 
eggs were marked with black hieroglyphics like 
those seen in the eggs of an oriole or red-winged 
blackbird. The vesper is that gray sparrow which 
shows two white tail-feathers when it flies, and 
sings an alto song whose first two notes are always 
in a different key from the rest of the strain. 
In another field we flushed a bobolink. Unfortu- 
nately the Artist, whose duty it was to watch the rope, 
was at the moment gazing skywards at cloud-effects, 
and though we burrowed and peered for a full hour 
in the fragrant dripping grass, we never found 
that nest. The home of a bobolink is one of the best 
hidden of all of our common ground-builders. I re- 
member one Decoration Day when I highly resolved . 
to find a bobolink’s nest in a field where several pairs 
were nesting. Early in my hunt I decided that the 
gay black-and-white males, which seemed to be fly- 
ing and singing aimlessly, were really signaling my 
approach to the females on the nests. At any rate, 
the mother birds would rise far ahead as I came near, 
evidently after having run for long distances through 
the grass, and gave me no clue as to the whereabouts 
