32 
THE CONDOR 
Voi.. VI 
his straw basket of eggs, he’ll call “Here it is ! Here it is !” and a minute later 
he’ll screech the same lie from another tussock ten yards away. 
Why Nature put that jet black mask across his countenance is more than I 
can guess, unless it was to enable him to sing his falsehoods without a blush. His 
wife must be a model for she goes about gossiping without the sign of a veil. It’s 
the Turkish custom reversed. 
I never know just when yellow-throat is going to depart in the fall or just 
when he will return in the spring. I have never seen him going away or coming 
back. You may hear him one day and find your garden tenantless the following. 
Then, after a long silence, you wake up some morning and find he’s there again, 
as if he had grown out of the ground during the night, like a toad stool. After his 
return in the spring it’s never long before he is scratching out a pit in a dry grass- 
bunch to line with bark strips and shreds. 
No, for all my trouble I didn’t find the nest and eggs, though I beseiged the 
swampy patch a 
dozen times. But 
one day as I skirted 
the edge of the garden, 
a streak of yellow 
darted from under my 
feet. She was brood- 
ing a basket of naked 
nestlings. Then I 
laid seige, not too 
close at first. I 
trained my camera on 
the most advanta- 
geous perches about 
the vicinity. I nar- 
rowed in day by day. 
The warblers soon 
grew accustomed to 
the click of the shut- 
ter. Then I leveled my 
Long-focus squarely 
FEMALE YELLOW-THROAT 
on the nest. 
Bird families are like human families in many ways. Sometimes a husband is 
as thoughtful about household duties as the wife, in other cases he rarely if ever 
as.sists in the care of the children. It is generally far more difficult to photograph 
a male bird than a female. Yellow-throat was a pleasing exception. He worked 
side by side with his wife and never feared or faltered for an instant. 
'I'liis was not the case in the black-throated gray warbler family. The pater 
familias seemed unavoidably detained away from home on matters of business or 
social importance most of the day when the children were crying for food. The 
wife took entire charge of feeding and caring for the nestlings. Only the male has 
the jet black throat, which is a distinctive mark of the species. The female wears 
a white cravat. But, to my notion, she is a deal more important in warbler affairs 
than her more highly marked mate. 
Fortunately, just at the side of the fir sapling, in which we found the gray 
warbler’s nest, was the sawed-off stump of a large tree. Upon this we could climb 
