Lancaster, Mass.
1902
June 10
(No 6)
  The Henslow's Sparrow's nest was some eight or ten
feet from the edge of the meadow and fully three feet
above it on a steeply-sloping bank which formed the
base of a barren sandy hillside where the only vegetation
consisted of trailing Blackberry vines (Rubus hispidus),
cinque-foil (Potentilla canadensis) and a few small, scattered
gray birches. Extending along the foot of the bank for a
distance of fifty or sixty feet, nourished either by a richer
soil than that which prevailed higher up or by moisture
drawn from the meadow, was a straight narrow (about
two yards in width) belt of a peculiar broad-leafed
grass evi evidently unmolested
either by cattle or the scythe for the dark green blades 
of the present season's growth were intermingled with
those of former years. Indeed the latter, bleached by
the winter's snows to a pale, brownish white, were so numerous
and uniformly distributed that at a distance they gave
the bank the appearance of a strip of clean, dry sand.
Both old and new blades were of about equal lengths
- from twelve to fourteen inches.
At first glance they appeared to form a rather densely matted
bed of vegetation but in reality they were so coarse and erect
and so evenly if not widely spaced that it was
only necessary to disarrange them slightly with the hand,
or with the sticks that we carried, to see quite down
to the ground which was hard and smooth and
for the most part wholly free from any covering save
that of the grass just mentioned. On this the Henslow's
Sparrow had evidently depended solely for concealment
for her nest had no artificial canopy or covering of any
kind. Indeed it was not even sunken in the ground.
Nest of Henslow's Sparrow.
17