68 
NATURE STUDY. 
on the ground among the ferns, where the oven bird guard¬ 
ed her eggs. On our approach the golden-crowned father 
gave his warning cry,—Teacher, teacher , teacher! and 
tried to lure us away into the woods, while the little moth¬ 
er in her green garb slipped away among the leaves. 
The round doorway at one side of the little Dutch oven 
seemed hardly large enough to admit its occupant, but 
within the arched dome was ample room. It seemed strange 
that no passing footstep had crushed the little home so skill¬ 
fully concealed beneath the leaves. 
Of a very different type was the home of a night-hawk 
which we visited. In reality she had no nest at all, she 
simply camped out on a bare granite rock, which lifted its 
head just above the surface in an unmown field, within a 
short distance of a dwelling. 
For two weeks, indifferent alike to the scorching rays of 
the sun and the pelting rains, the little gray and brown 
babies nestled at their mother’s side, the mottled feathers 
of the trio blending so perfectly with the gray rock that they 
were almost invisible. If an interested observer came too 
near, the bird would fly to a branch of an apple tree near 
by, where she would remain motionless, stretched length¬ 
wise on the branch, apparently part of it. 
At dusk the two old birds could be seen darting about 
for their supper, which, if their words were true, consisted 
of “Beef” and “Pork.” 
The small boys of the neighborhood paid unconscious tri¬ 
bute to the labors of the Audubon Society’s secretary dur¬ 
ing the past summer, for though frequent visitors, not one 
of them thought of disturbing the little family in the least. 
If time and your patience were but limitless, I should 
like to tell of the home of the phoebe, built by the roadside 
under an overhanging bank—of the chewink just across the 
road, whose nest beneath a charred stump held four creamy 
eggs heavily mottled on the ends with brown—of the scar- 
