FIELD AND STUDY 



destroy. What trust, what peril, what artless art 

 it all suggests! The April or May day when I find 

 a song sparrow's nest has a tbuch that the other 

 days do not have; and if a spring goes by without 

 my finding one or more, I miss -something from my 

 life. It is not usually by searching that we find a 

 sparrow's nest; it is by accident, or by watchful 

 waiting. 



The past season I found my first treasure by 

 watchful waiting. I have found scores of the nests 

 of this familiar dooryard songster, but none that 

 ever gave me more pleasure than this one. The 

 cautious little ground-builder betrayed the secret 

 of her nest to me when, humanly speaking, she 

 thought she was securely keeping it. I knew there 

 was a nest near my study by the song of the male 

 on the trees and bushes around me, and had made 

 ■some search for it, but without avail. One must first 

 have some sort of a clue to a nest. As I sat here in 

 the summer-house one afternoon with only the 

 most vague thoughts about birds, I chanced to see 

 a song sparrow flit out of the grass near the border 

 of the just-ploughed vineyard, alight upon the 

 freshly turned earth, and in a fussy, nervous way 

 go hunting about for food. Have you ever seen a 

 setting hen come off the nest to feed, and noted how 

 she fluffs out her feathers, flirts her tail, and hurries 

 about as if in ill-humor? My little hen sparrow acted 

 in the same way, and I instantly inferred that she 

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