1386 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS. 
tall elms at the side of the orchard. A solitary cuckoo 
alighted in the tree nearest the house; he uttered two 
or three soft, mellow notes, and flew to the woods. A 
pair nested in the orchard last year. ' 
In a partially dead tree a pair of wakeups, or yellow- 
hammers, were nesting. They have excavated a hole ina 
large limb, or rather one part of the tree, as the top of 
one of the two main branches had broken off, leaving a 
stub three or four feet in length. The nest was only a 
little higher than a man’s head, and the old gentleman 
had placed a wooden chair under the tree in order to 
get a view of the nest. I approached the place noise- 
lessly, and clapping my hand over the opening of the 
cavity made the sitting bird a prisoner. I gently lifted 
the beautiful creature to the light; she made no resist- 
ance, but the fluttering of her heart spoke her conster-° 
nation. To have long resisted the pleading of her dark 
eyes would have been an act of cruelty. If a “bird in 
the hand is worth two in the bush” it must be a live 
one, even as an object of scientific study. I detained 
her only long enough to admire the beautiful umber and 
bright yellow of her rich plumage, more beautifully 
penciled than could have been done with brush and pen- 
cil by the finest artist. As I opened my hand she flew 
off, uttering a note of gladness, and rejoined her mate 
that was anxiously watching her from his perch on the 
trunk of an adjoining tree. They soon flew off to 
another part of the lot to talk over the affair and to de- 
termine whether it would be safe to ever venture back 
to the nest again, but they must have become reassured, 
