1902.
June 10
(No 4)
  After finding the first Vireo's nest this morning we drove
directly to the Pansy Farm and began searching the meadows
for Henslow's Sparrows' nests. On the further (eastern) side
of the brook in a narrow strip of moist, sphagnum-carpeted
ground broken by little hillocks covered with low blueberry bushes,
mosses of various kinds and tufts of short wiry grass, we
flushed a female Henslow's sparrow from a spot where we have
found her five or six times before this season. As usual she
rose literally from under foot but although we searched the
ground inch by inch and tore up most of the grass &
bushes we could find nothing. The bird, all the while, showed
unmistakeable anxiety chirping almost incessantly among some
alders in which she had taken refuge. We finally withdrew
thirty or forty yards & watched her. After a few minutes
she flew out into the meadow and alighted in a small
bush where the male joined her for a moment & then
went back to his singing station about forty yards off on
the other side of the brook. Soon after this the female changed
her position to a tall weed stalk where she perched for at
least ten minutes evidently watching us closely (we were sitting
on a mound within plain sight & not over 30 yards from her)
She then flew to the ground alighting within a yard of the
place where we have started her so many times before and
at once disappeared. We waited some ten or fifteen minutes
longer and then advanced rather quickly, spreading out at first so
as to finally converge from three different directions on the
spot where we had seen the bird alight. Harriman, who
was on the extreme right, flushed her, not in the least
where we had expected to find her but fully 25 feet away
and from a hard, dry grassy bank.
15