208 NATURAL HISTORY READER. 



ings ; but how consummate is this art, and how skillfully 

 is the nest concealed ! We occasionally light upon it, but 

 who, unaided by the movements of the bird, could find it 

 out ? During the present season I went to the woods 

 nearly every day for a fortnight, without making any dis- 

 coveries of this kind ; till one day, paying them a farewell 

 visit, I chanced to come upon several nests. 



2. A black and white creeping warbler suddenly became 

 much alarmed as I approached a crumbling old stump in a 

 dense part of the forest. He alighted upon it, chirped 

 sharply, ran up and down its sides, and finally left it with 

 much reluctance. The nest, which contained three young 

 birds nearly fledged, was placed upon the ground at the 

 foot of the stump, and in such a position that the color of 

 the young harmonized perfectly with the bits of bark, 

 sticks, etc., lying about. My eye rested upon them for the 

 second time before I made them out. They hugged the 

 nest very closely, but, as I put down my hand, they all 

 scampered off with loud cries for help, which caused the 

 parent-birds to place themselves almost within my reach. 

 The nest was merely a little dry grass arranged in a thick 

 bed of dry loaves. 



3. This was amid a thick undergrowth. Moving on into 

 a passage of large, stately hemlocks, with only here and there 

 a small beech or maple rising up into the perennial twilight, 

 I paused to make out a note which was entirely new to me. 

 It is still in my ear. Though unmistakably a bird-note, it 

 yet suggested the bleating of a tiny lambkin. Presently 

 the birds appeared — a pair of the solitary vireo. They 

 came flitting from point to point, alighting only for a mo- 

 ment at a time, the male silent, but the female uttering 

 this strange, tender note. It was a rendering into some 

 new sylvan dialect of the human sentiment of maidenly 

 love. It was really pathetic in its sweetness and childlike 

 confidence and joy. 



