THE FIRST PLANTING 
21 
sticks so interwoven that they were almost as re- 
sisting as a stone wall. By it the doorway appeared 
quite closed. Joseph wondered how the wrens 
ever went in and out. He had watched them so 
often since they moved into the house that they 
had wisely made up their minds he meant to do 
them no harm. He was now hoping that one or 
the other would go in or come out, so that he might 
see how they managed to slip through the blockade. 
Suddenly then the female bird flew towards the 
house. She slipped in without apparently waiting 
a minute to think how she would enter. It almost 
appeared as though she went through the barricade. 
Little Joseph was quick enough, however, to see 
that from the bottom of the doorway her flight 
slanted upward to where a tiny space had been left 
free. Indeed, the little wrens had been clever 
enough to block completely the doorway at the bot- 
tom and to let the nest slant back a little from the 
top, thus leaving the space to slip in by an upward 
line of flight. 
Only a little bird knows how to build in that 
way, Joseph thought, when out she flew so quickly 
that he could not see where she went. When she 
returned she had another tiny twig in her mouth. 
So the nest is not yet finished, Joseph mused, and 
wondered if they were fastening things up tighter 
to keep him out. He then remembered that birds 
had other enemies besides boys, for, only a day 
after the wrens had come to the house, a pair of 
