POKING AROUND FOR BIRDS' NESTS 149 



tion of two back-country roads after the old- 

 fashioned manner, and over this pretty, natural 

 garden bed the butterflies and goldfinches hover 

 all day long, while almost always, in near-by trees 

 or shrubs, a nest or two may be found. 



Perhaps with the roadsides, too, should be asso- 

 ciated the bob-white, in the fortunate regions where 

 he may still be found — with the split rail fences 

 especially which used to line the country ways. 

 On the pasture side of such fences, in the shallow 

 V formed at an intersection, where the reaper could 

 never get to disturb the tangle of grass and sweet- 

 fern, the quail used often to nest. But alas! both 

 the fences and the quails are fast disappearing now. 



The female of the indigo-bird is dun and incon-r 

 spicuous. It is her mate who perches on a tele- 

 graph wire or tree limb, over the road, and attracts 

 your admiring attention. But when you try to 

 follow him into the tangle of bushes or weeds along 

 the roadside below, to discover the nest, you will 

 probably find that he is leading you a chase. He 

 never seems to go directly to his mate. Indeed, 

 one of the most interesting things about birds at 

 nesting-time is the precaution taken by the average 

 male bird to reach the nest without detection. I 

 have seen even a chipping-sparrow fly to half 'a 

 dozen perches, some of them ten or fifteen feet from 

 the nest, while bringing a fly in its mouth, and from 

 each perch look all about cautiously before finally 

 going in to the right spot. 



Such are the environments some of our more com- 

 mon Eastern American birds select for their nesting- 

 places. The list might be indefinitely extended, of 



