42 NATURE'S REALM. 
flash back a radiance from the swallows’ wings 
as they flew about just under the rough-hewn _ 
rafters. 
The great square chimney of the house, 
which boasted of five fire-places, was ample 
refuge for some half dozen pairs of chimney 
swifts. Their ascent and descent were always 
accompanied by a sound like distant thunder, 
produced by the whirring of their wings, and 
so natural as to deceive the city cousin, and 
ofttimes I have myself started in haste from a 
midday rest on the cool floor of the spare room 
during the haying season, expecting to see . 
some darkening thunder clouds looming in the 
northwest. f 
In the drooping branches of the row of elms 
along the highway the gaudy black and yellow 
of the Baltimore oriole were always to be seen 
from about the middle of May until the impulse 
of migration drew them southward, and the 
purse-shaped nests in various stages of demo- 
lition bespoke previous years of occupancy. 
The boundaries of the farm need never to 
have been crossed to find the entire local fauna 
represented. The swamp thicket, which gréw 
dense after the timber had been cut, was a re- 
sort for our smaller warblers, and many a de- 
siderata has been obtained from close search 
in its depths. In the adjoining woodland was 
found the roofed nest of that quaint little war- 
bler, the 6ven bird, and the frail construction 
of rootlets that serve for that gaudy south- 
erner, the scarlet tanager, and more than once 
I have flushed the grouse from her eggs, de- 
posited ‘in a simple hollow amongst the dry 
leaves, without leaving the homestead of my 
birth. 
Down in a swamp grove at the farther 
boundary of the river meadow a pair of crows 
always nested, but it is simple justice to state 
that this particular pair of sable depredators 
never molested our young corn. It was too 
near their home for them to excite our wrath, 
though I must say our next neighbor was not 
so fortunate. One reminiscence connected 
with this pair of crows is too strongly im- 
pressed on my memory to be readily effaced. 
On one afternoon in early May I essayed to as- 
sault their stronghold. The nest was placed 
high in a swamp oak and I, then only a lad of 
twelve, had never attempted such a feat of 
muscular exertion in the powers of ascension. 
Progress was slow and tiresome, but at last 
breathless and triumphant I threw my leg over 
the limb on which the nest was placed and 
gazed at the five olive green shaded and 
blotched eggs, while the discordant cawings. — 
of the parent birds rang in my ears like the 
angry curses of a discomfited foe. How 
flushed with victory I felt as I glanced down 
the thirty feet to the ground below. Since that 
time I have spurred my way with climbers up 
the smooth trunk to a bald eagle’s nest placed 
seventy-five feet from the cliffs ona dead pine 
at Frenchman’s Bay, and have hung suspended 
by a rope three hundred feet above the angry 
breakers at the precipitous crags on Southern 
Head at Grand Manan, that I might find the 
homes of the puffin and black guillemot, but 
never with the same sense of pride in a suc- 
cessful achievement as at this, my first crow’s 
nest. Removing my soft felt hat I carefully 
placed my treasures into it, and then came the 
equally difficult problem of a safe descent, but 
by closely hugging the trunk I slid slowly 
down, to the great detriment of my trousers, 
and stood at last safely on ¢erra firma, when 
like a flash the fact came to me that up in that 
abominable nest I had left the eggs, together 
with my hat. Here let the curtain fall on the 
acme of my misery. 
On the farther side ot the swamp, in the 
“‘forty-acre”’ timber lot, the devastators of our 
poultry yard had their Homes. In this tract of 
heavy woodland, which was over half a mile 
long, I found the red-shouldered hawk and the 
coopers hawk, the hen and chicken hawk of 
rural nomenclature, nesting in considerable 
numbers for rapacious birds. This was a se- 
cret which, however, I did not betray, for had 
I informed but one farmer of the locality the 
old birds would have been shot trom their 
nests on the following Sunday. 
A paig of marsh harriers, those inoffensive 
hunters of frogs and mice, were once found 
nesting in the huckleberry pasture, for this spe- 
cies differs from its congeners in nesting on the 
ground, and when I indiscreetly showed my 
find to a neighbor’s son, I was greeted the next 
afternoon by the sight of the female hawk 
