FOREST AND STREAM. 
[Sept. i6, 1905. 
22 8 
Some Nests of the Wildwood. 
It is a mistake to suppose that nest hunting is all roses. 
True, for the most part it is a pleasure, and there are 
times when the bird lover is fairly thrown into trans- 
ports; but it also has its difficulties and annoyances. Do 
you think it merely pastime to trudge for hours through 
a tangle of weeds and thickets until your limbs ache and 
the per-spiration streams from every pore without finding 
a single bird domicile, or to sit in a damp, bosky place 
for a long time watching a shy bird and scarcely daring 
to move, or, worse yet, to scratch, while the gnats, mos- 
quitoes, woodticks and chiggers enter a cabal to make 
your life as miserable as they, can? No; nest hunting is 
work, not play. It demands so much effort and patience 
that only the real bird 'student will persist in its pursuit 
after a few fruitless attempts. Whatever else it may be, 
bird study is no sinecure. . 
Generalizations aside, houu.ver, during a recent spring 
in eastern Kansas 1 gave special time and effort to the 
finding of the nests of a 'number of shy v/ood warblers. 
There were the beautiful Kentucky warblers, breeding 
in the woods of m\' neighbo'rhocd. and yet their nests had 
hitherto escaped me. Perhaps it w'as lU}^ own fault, how- 
ever, for in their breeding time the woods of eastern 
Kansas are infested with ticks and chiggers, whose atten- 
tions are superlatively offensive, and I have felt shy of 
lengthy visits to their haunts. I could tell you stories 
of these pests that would surprise you, but I forbear. 
Now, I heroically determined to brave their assaults and 
pat up with the consequences. It may be said here as an 
obiter dictum that the consequences were abundant to the 
point of nausea. 
In the latter part of May and the first of June I spent 
many hours prowling about in the woods. For several 
weeks my quest for warblers’ nests was in vain, although 
it seemed to me that I covered every foot of the wooded 
area. Most of the time Nentucl y warblers were singing 
their blithe arias in the bushes and trees, varying their 
concerts by pursuing one another pell mell through the 
weeds and copses, chippering at the top of their _ shrill 
voices, doubtless settling questions hymenial according to 
the social codes in vogue in the warbler realm. On a 
bushy hillside a little male, already clad in his wedding 
suit, would approach his lady love, twdnkling his wings 
and chirping in an appealing w^ay, when she would dash 
at him and drive him down the slope with as much fury 
as if she despised the very bushes he stood on. Sorne- 
times the Kentuckies would, set up a vigorous chirping 
as if I were growing “hot ’ in my quest of their nests , 
then they would pretend to be utterly ind^i^fferent to my 
presence, as if they were saying, “Cold, cold” ; but no mat- 
ter where I sought, no nests w-ere to be found. 
i'his AVcis in r woodland about a half-ixiilc froln the 
suburbs of the town. One day I extended my excursion 
to a breezy hilltop something over a mile farther away. 
It was a wild tangle of weeds and bushes, interspersed 
with a few small oak trees,, the undergrowth and second 
growth of an old clearing. Here a_ Kentucky warbler was 
seen with a bunch of worms in his bill at all events, 1 
took him for a male because of the brilliancy of his 
plumage. He flitted about on the dead twigs bf some 
bushes for a few moments, -chirping nervously, then scut- 
tled down into the weeds aiid disappeared. Nor was he 
seen afterwards on that day, aldioug‘h I tarried , around 
the place for a couple of hours, making a toilsome but 
fruitless search for his nest. A few days later he per- 
formed the same maneuver, puzzling me not a littlq. What 
nonplussed me was that he could disappear so completely 
and that no nest could be discovered at the place where 
he went down with his morsel. Subsequent events proved 
that he was a master of finesse in his own sphere. 
The 4 th of June again found me on the breezy hilltop. 
Only a few minutes, elapsed before the handsome male 
warbler began to chirp in a tree nearby, while he held a 
luscious tidbit— a green werm— in his bill. Then he flew 
to another tree down the slope a short distance, _ and 
presently flitted down into the weeds and disap- 
peared. This was about three reds from the place where 
he had descended on the two previous occasions. A few 
moments later I was seated in the path in the shadow of 
the tree where the bird -had last been seen. A wait of 
some minutes was rewarded by the appearance of the 
little mother holding a morsel in her biU.' It was curious 
that she had kept out of sight on my previous visits. She 
expressed her disapproval of my presence in a series of 
fine chirps, quite different from the loud, full-toned calls 
of her mate, who soon joined her on the tree, also bearing 
some worms in his beak. The two kept up a chorus of 
chirping for a long time, the male remaining stationary 
on a twig at a safe distance, his crest feathers erect, while 
his more nervous spouse flitted about with a good deal of 
acritation. Presently the male swallowed his bunch of 
worms, evidently feeling that he could protest more vigor- 
ously wuth them in his crop than in his bill. Plainly the 
mamma was very anxious to feed her babies, but did not 
want to betray their hiding place, which surely must be 
close at hand Thinking I might be so near the nest as to 
prevent her going to it, I moved a rod or more up the 
path It must have been fully an hour and a half that I 
watched the devoted pair. At length the little madam 
dropped down to some twigs, then dived into the weeds 
below and ceased her chirping. At the same time her 
mate flew to a more distant tree, and tried by loud^ calling 
to divert my attention from the mother’s proceedings.^ 
But I have been studying birds too long to be victim- 
ized by such artifices. A few moments later I went to the 
charmed spot where the little lady had last been seen and 
was looking down into my first Kentucky warbler’s nest, 
which was in plain sight amid the weeds, not more than 
three feet from the path. Its holdings were four infants, 
a little more than half-fledged, the fleshy corners of their 
mouths showing light yellow. ‘ It was a pretty bird home, 
rather bulky for so small a bird, its foundation consisting 
of dry leaves, the superstructure of grasses and other 
fibres, and its concave floor carpeted with finer material. 
Wise in the ways of the world for their age, the bantlings 
did not open their mouths as I stooped to touch them 
with my finger, but snuggled close to the bottom of the 
nest, so early had they learned through the tutelage either 
of instinct or oT their parents, that the world is peopled 
with foes that hurt and destroy. What a wonderful thing 
is intuitive fear in the heart of a wild creature even from 
its tender infancy. 
Well might these birdlings be afraid, as the sequel 
proved. Having inspected the cosy domicile and counted 
the noses it contained I walked away some distance to 
scrawl some notes. This occupied about ten minutes. 
Then, wishing to look once more on the little group be- 
fore leaving the hilltop for other fields, I quietly went 
down the path toward the nest. As I approached .the 
little mother wus chirping in an agitated way. “She 
thinks I am coming this time in the character of a kid- 
napper,” was my thought. But she had other cause for 
perturbation, and cause enough, too. Bending over the 
spot and looking down into the opening among the weeds, 
I wi"as horrified to see a huge blacksna'ke coiled over the 
nest, his head swaying this way and that, in the act of 
gobbling down one of the warbler infants. There was no 
time for second thought. My cane — a good-sized oak 
club — was brought down upon the serpent with a death- 
dealing blow that broke his spinal column and ended his 
earthly career. Of course I was careful to aim in such a 
way that the blow would not fall upon the innocent bant- 
lings. For a few minutes all the primeval savagery of 
my nature was aroused. I tossed the snake into the path, 
beat him again and again with my club, crushed his head 
with my heel, thereby obeying the Scriptural injunction, 
and, lastly, held him up in the air as an example of warn- 
ing to all his serpentine kith and kin and an exhibition to 
the birds of -myrlTfeadiness to avenge their wrongs as far 
as lay in my powe^. How much I wondered whether the 
little Kentuckians appreciated my timely rescue of their 
helpless offspring. 
One of the youngsters, however, had been swallowed by 
the maurauder while the rest seemed to be unharmed. A 
few days later, I regret to say, the nest was empty and no 
Kentucky warblers, old or young, were to be seen on the 
hilltop. After all, in spite of my humane intentions, I 
had simply prevented one tragedy to afford opportunity 
for another. 
On June 14 the rambler was again in the woods of 
which mention was first made, the one nearest the town. 
It was not the first time I had been there between the 4 th 
and the 14 th, but in the interim no nests had been found. 
One day a hooded warbler came down to the little stream 
in the ravine to drink and bathe. She had the air of a 
brooding bird, .and I watched her closely. Her ablutions 
done and her feathers well preened and dried, she disap- 
peared in the tanglewood, giving me no chance to note 
the spot to which she had gone. A long and what I 
deemed a thorough search of the area above the ravine 
for several rods brought no results, much to my disap- 
pointment and mystification. 
Now, on the 14 th, I was strolling about on the copsy 
hill side a considerable distance above the ravine. While 
going up a steep place along an obscure woodland path 
I was brought to a standstill by a sharp chirp. It came, 
as I presently observed, from the throat of a female 
hooded warbler, which began at once to smooth her 
ruffled plumes, a sure sign of her having recently left her 
nest. In a little while she flew into some low bushes 
above me at the side of the path, slipped out of sight, and 
her chirping ceased. An examination of the locality re- 
vealed no nest; so I turned back down the path, having 
gone only a few steps when the bird began to chirp again,^ 
this time below me. She had surreptitiously slipped 
around her pursuer through a dense thicket at the side 
of the path, meaning to steal upon her nest in my rear. 
Creeping down the hill I espied a tiny nest in a small bush 
not more than an arm’s length from the path. Its con- 
tents were two eggs, one a cowbird’s, and a wee birdling 
just from the shell: Was it right to lift the intruded 
cowbird’s egg from its place and fling it away? I think ■ 
it was. 
What a tiny structure the nest was. One is almost , 
tempted to coin a word and call it a riestlet. And the egg 
and chick were proportionately diminutive. Everything 
about the domicile, from the mother bird to the un- 
hatched eg.g, was cast in a Lilliputian mould. The dainty 
white egg, its shell so fine and delicate as to be almost 
translucent, was prettily flecked with rufous brown at the 
larger end, and was quite pointed. It would have de- 
lighted the eye of an oologist. To make absolutely ' sure 
the nest belonged to the hooded warbler I took a turn of 
fifteen o,r twfenty minutes through another part of the 
woods and then returned to the charmed spot, 'finding the 
little madam sitting in the cup looking up ^at me with 
wild, inquiring eyes, as if she were saying, “Would you 
really hurt a little bird, or rob her of her precious 
babies ?” One cannot help speculating as to' the causes ' 
that impel the hooded warbler to build her nest in the 
fork of. small bush iii the woods, while other members 
of the family, also denizens of the sarfie sylvan retreats, 
set. their nests on the ground, arid at the same time the 
redstarts build in a sapling or tree. But, for that matter, 
who can declare the final cause of anything? 
The' 14 th of June brought me another surprise. That 
rare little bird, the worm-eating warbler, -vvas trilling in 
the thick woods a little farther down the hill, just above 
the bottom of the ravine. Presently_ his 'mate appeared 
with a large white moth or worm iri her bill, chirped 
about in' the bushy tangle for about fifteen minutes, then 
dropped to the ground and got rid of her rriorsel, I corild ’ 
not tell how. At first I decided that she had swallowed 
it herself, but on second thought, deemed it best to look ' 
closely, when, lo, a little bob-tailed, worm-eating warbler 
was discovered perched on a twig near the leaf covered 
ground. It surely was not more thari a few hours from 
the nest, and still too young to fly .more than a few feet, 
could not have come far. ' 
There is something odd about this case at least worthy 
of note. In all my previous prowling, through these 
woods I had never seen or heard a warbler of this species 
or even suspected the presence of one. I had been here 
again and again, spending hours in beating the bush, right 
at the spot, too, where the youngster was found. Yet the 
parents had built their nest, brooded their eggs, and 
hatched their young, without my once having so much as 
suspected their presence. How could they escape me? 
Why had the brooding bird never sprung up from her 
nest on the ground while I was tramping about? Above 
all, why had the little husband never trilled his sylvan 
tune until this .morning ? This was certainly- reducing 
wariness and secrecy to a fine art. 
There are red letter days in the bird lover’s calendar, 
and the 14 th of June was. one of them in mine. “One 
more round in these woods before I leave them,” was my 
mental resolve at about 10 o’clock; and a fortuitous 
■‘round” it was. As I trudged down the slope my eye 
fell on a nest set at the foot of a bush — and, yes, there 
sat a Kentucky warbler in the cup, craning up her neck 
and looking at me with wuld, dilated eyes, her yellow, de- 
curved superciliary band and golden throat showing 
plainly and revealing her identity. What a sweet sylvan 
picture it was, the olive, black and amber of the bird in a 
setting of gray and green and brown. A too close ap- 
proach drove her from her nest. She sc'uttled in a zigzag 
line over the dead leaves like a golden mouse, gliding so 
quietly that I doubt if I should have heard her had I not 
first seen her. The nest’s holdings were one Kentucky 
warbler’s, egg and three of the cowbird— which meant 
that there would be no warbler reared in that family, but 
three feathered parasites, unless I interfered with the 
natural course of things. 
The afternoon found me in another deep, wooded 
ravine something better than a mile to the south. I 
pressed my way up into the dense woods, where another 
pair of worm-eating warblers were unexpectedly encoun- 
tered, the husband trilling among the trees and bushes, 
the wife feeding a strapping youngster whose ruffled 
plumage made him look larger than his purveyor. Why 
had I never seen or heard the worm-eaters in my previous 
visits to this haunt? 
The most gratifying find of the day came last. More 
than once a creeping warbler had been seen and heard 
in this part' of the woods, and many a weary search had 
been made for its nest. Now, I was beating about a 
somewhat open space, looking for the hidden domiciles of 
various, birds, when at length I climbed a slope to the 
edge of the thick timber. The presence of some scattered 
fibers on the ground caught my eye. As I stretched out 
my hand toward the spot a creeping warbler — a female — 
leaped from the ground, gave a frightened chirp, and 
darted into some bushes near at hand. It was a charm- 
ing nursery that greeted my eyes — an elfin nest set in a 
tiny hollow at the foot of a little bank, slightly roofed 
over by the leafy twigs of a small bush. Like tiny oval 
pearls four eggs studded the bottom of the cup, their 
ground color being white and the larger end prettily 
wreathed with spots of umber and cinnamon. 
A pretty picture she made a week later — June 2 l— as 
she sat in her dainty cup, her beak and tail pointed up- 
w'ard, her striped back bent in an arc, and her little 
wings spread out over the rim. She did not fly up till my 
cane was stretched out close to her nest. Her four eggs 
were like tiny pebbles. 
I regret to have to say that the nests of the Kentucky, 
the hooded and the black and white warblers were all 
robbed. The hooded warbler’s nest bore no signs of 
violence; it was simply left lone and empty. One day I 
found the three cowbirds’ eggs of the Kentucky warbler’s 
nest converted into squirming bantlings, while the one 
Kentucky’s egg was not yet pipj)ed. The latter had 
slipped into the broken shell of one of the larger, eggs, 
about two-thirds of its surface being covered by it. I 
removed the encasing shell to give the chick within a 
better ch'ance to break through its prison walls. Whether 
it ever did so or not I do not know, for when I visited 
the place a few days later the nest was despoiled. 
The same fate overtook the black and white warbler’s 
nest in the distant woodland. The little cup was empty 
and the owners were nowhere to be seen. Let a nest be 
ever so well concealed, it seems that there are sharp-eyed 
enemies able to find it. Still, when you see the vast army 
of young warblers flitting about in the woods in the 
autumn you are comforted in the reflection that hundreds 
of birds- are successful in their efforts to rear families, 
even though you cannot help thinking of the many trage- 
dies that occur. Leander S. Keyser. 
Insect That Sits on Eggs. 
A remarkable case of an insect sitting on its eggs is 
recorded by F. P. Dodd in the Transactions of the Ento- 
mological Society of London. This strange departure 
from the normal habits of the insect race is exhibited 
by a species of bug. The female sits in a brooding atti- 
tude over her eggs for a period of three weeks. When 
the young begin to break through she retires an inch 
or so from the eggs, and remains there for some hours 
until the last egg is hatched. She then departs, leaving 
the young ones to take care of themselves. During the 
whole time of brooding, and till all the young are hatched, 
the mother eats nothing. It is thought that this brooding 
habit may be a means of protection against the attacks of 
ichneumon flies. — London Globe. 
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