VoJ^xnj WiDMANN, Bro-WH Creefer Nesting in Missotiri. 35 T 



Overhead were frequent bickerings in the sphere of a pair of 

 Wood Pewees, who were busily engaged in the construction of 

 their nest. There were Acadian Flycatchers with startling 

 exclamations and mysterious wing-whistHngs, soliloquies of the 

 Warbling Vireo, effusions by Indigos and Cardinals, innum- 

 erable willitzkis of the Maryland Yellow-throat, and from 

 time to time a modest opinion by the weather-wise Cuckoo. 



As the hours passed on and the sun's rays had destroyed all 

 dimness in the forest, the Wood Thrush turned the leadership over 

 to the Summer Tanager, and the pauses made by the earlier 

 songsters grew longer and longer. Two pairs of Hooded Mer- 

 gansers, who at first had been much incommoded by my pres- 

 ence and had repeatedly shown their anxiety by circling wildly 

 and with notes of alarm through the treetops, were now visit- 

 ing their nest-holes without fear. At this season the beauty of 

 the male's dress and coiffure is entirely gone; both parents 

 resemble each other so much that they are generally mistaken 

 for female Wood Ducks, which are also very common breeders 

 in these swamps. Both species breed sometimes together in 

 small colonies and so near human habitations that their coming 

 and going may easily be watched by the people. A lady resid- 

 ing at Byrd's Mill witnessed the act of removing the young from 

 the nest, sixty feet above ground. The young were brought 

 down, one by one, clinging to the back of the parent and hold- 

 ing fast with the bill. That they are clever climbers I can testify 

 myself ; I have seen them climb up the inside of a drygoods box, 

 two feet high, holding fast to the planed boards with their 

 sharp claws and stiff tail-feathers. 



It was now ten o'clock and my patience was nearly gone. 

 Every noise in the forest had been attentively listened to and 

 every moving speck followed, but in vain. Silence began to 

 become oppressive. I rapped woodpecker-fashion against a 

 half-rotten stump. Almost as if by magic a pair of Pileated 

 Woodpeckers appeared on the scene; a second rap brought 

 them still nearer, evidently bent on the closest investigation. 



At the same time the four shrill notes were heard in close 

 proximity and turning in the direction a small bird was seen 

 flitting past and alighting against the trunk of a tupelo a few 



