that nest, and at Thanksgiving time one 

 of the home-coming guests, who was an 

 enthusiastic kindergartener in the city, 

 persuaded those generous nature stu- 

 dents to let her take their treasure to the 

 poor children who seldom saw the com- 

 monest kind of a hang-bird's nest, and 

 in that kindergarten it may be seen to- 

 day. , 



Another entry in the club book was 

 this : "Birds building on the ground, es- 

 pecially Vesper Sparrows, locate if pos- 

 sible where they have a fine outlook, and 

 give great attention to the arrangement 

 of the front yard." 



This was discovered when Emily Cly- 

 mer took her small brother Jo up in the 

 "side hill pasture" to see the finest moun- 

 tain view in all the county, and to find 

 wild strawberries ; while picking the ber- 

 ries they found what was afterward called 

 the juniper house; this was a Vesper 

 Sparrow's home, roofed by green grow- 

 ing juniper. 



Everybody knows that the prophet Eli- 

 jah could never have sat and wept under 

 a New England juniper tree; no tree is 

 less high or more nearly horizontal than 

 this ; in fact, we call it a bush — where it 

 is big — this one was not larger than Em- 

 ily Clymer's two hands, and growing 

 straight out from descending ground, it 

 formed a flat, green roof to the Sparrow 

 homestead ; then, while my lady sat upon 

 her nest, she looked out of her tiny front 

 door, across a gently sloping lawn, upon 

 a whole range of mountains. But most 

 remarkable of all were the ornamental 

 shade trees, for just ten inches from the 

 door, on either side, waved two big 

 brakes, symmetrical in size and shape ; 

 they gracefully arched across the en- 

 trance, and were to the Sparrow domicile 

 as the giant elms to the big Clymer home- 

 stead. A sketch of this beautiful resi- 

 dence was made by a member of the club 

 — for cameras were not common in Clo- 

 verdale then — the picture cannot be 

 taken from the club book, but I think we 

 can see it all with our mind's eye. 



Here is one of the most astounding 

 statements in that book of many obser- 

 vations : "Some Phoebes are like the 

 Golden Eagle in three ways — first, they 

 build on rocky and inaccessible cliffs, 

 second, they build in the same place for 



one hundred years ; and, third, when the 

 young are big enough to fly, they know 

 how, and just go up without any practic- 

 ing." All this can be proved to any one 

 who will go in nesting time to a cliff over- 

 hanging the river just below Cloverdale, 

 and who will accept the testimony of 

 some of the most reliable and respectable 

 men who have honored that place in the 

 past century. 



You must go in a boat and hug the 

 shore; of course you need a member of 

 the club for guide ; at an unexpected mo- 

 ment you are told to look over your head, 

 and there, glued to a shelf of rock so 

 small as to be entirely covered by the 

 same, is the nest ! No porch, or even 

 doorstep, beyond its wall — an overhang- 

 ing roof of rock above, a shoreless ex- 

 panse of water below; now, if some one 

 can keep the boat steady, and you have 

 the nerve to stand at the highest point of 

 the bow, then by reaching over your head 

 you can gently touch some fuzzy bits of 

 life in the nest. Now you know the first 

 and last of the facts recorded are correct : 

 there is the nest on the inaccessible cliff ; 

 there are the birds, and if they did not fly 

 up and out into the world the first time 

 they stood on the edge of the nest, would 

 they not be in the dark water below, in- 

 stead of coming back to the old home for 

 a hundred years ? 



The evidence of successive occupation 

 for a century is this : The present family 

 of Walkers — father and children — have 

 watched that nest, never finding it empty 

 a summer for twenty years. Old Deacon 

 Walker, grandfather of our club mem- 

 bers — who, of course, initiated their fath- 

 er — proved that Phoebes had hatched in 

 the cliff nest during eighty years pre- 

 vious, in this wise : After he had stood 

 guard forty years, as the deacon loved to 

 relate, didn't his Uncle Israel — who had 

 been spending just those two-score years 

 in the South — come home one spring 

 evening, and the very next morning that 

 ancient worthy demanded a boat and a 

 boy to take him under the old Phoebe's 

 nest on the ledge, which he affirmed had 

 never been without tenants during the 

 forty years before he left Cloverdale ? 



So there are the figures and facts show- 

 ing how not only the nest, but bird love 

 and bird lore had come down through the 



150 



