Hunting With the Eyes. 
About a dozen years ago we broke ground 
for a new home out in the suburbs three miles 
from the city proper. Our friends held up their 
hands in horror and said : "What! going ’way 
out there! Why, it's out of the world!” Never¬ 
theless after the house was completed the mov¬ 
ing vans brought our belongings to it. 
To us the chief charm of the place was 
its great natural forest trees that spread their 
branches as if inviting us to come under them. 
There were elm, walnut, hickory and wild cherry 
trees, and in their tops the birds—blue and gray, 
orange-colored and scarlet, brown and black— 
flitted restlessly, singing quite beside themselves 
On an improvised wire fence a honeysuckle 
vine trailed its sweet blossoms. Every morning 
a dainty little hummingbird—whose bright crim¬ 
son throat patch glittered in the sun and quite 
dimmed the beauty of the red honeysuckle into 
the tubes of which he sank his long bill and 
took dainty sips of nectar from the flowers—• 
perched here a while and then swiftly flew away 
as though he feared someone would rob him of 
his sweets. Those he feared were a row of 
English sparrows lined upon the fence ready to 
seize anything and everything that came their 
way. Thieves as these little fellows are con¬ 
sidered, and useless and undesirable as they 
seem to be, yet I secretly admire them for their 
untiring devotion to their young. In the eaves 
teach them to gather their own food—as well 
as to steal. Our big maltese cat that stalks about 
the vard is the sparrows’ worst enemy, for he 
crawls along the fence waiting an opportunity 
to pounce upon the little family. When he does 
so a great amount of chatter goes on, while Tom 
sneakingly finds shelter under the porch with a 
bird in his mouth. 
One day while in the yard I learned that the 
robins and sparrows were not on friendly terms. 
I had gone out to inspect our crop of cherries 
and saw that a robin was in the tree enjoying 
their flavor. She had my full consent to do so 
after I discovered that for every bad cherry she 
ate she left two good ones to go into our pie. 
I had frightened her when I approached the 
A WIDESPREAD SHADE. 
WHERE OUR BIRDS NEST. 
as if knowing that intruders had invaded their 
territory. It was a spot where one felt that he 
could throw down the heavy burdens of life and, 
under the shade of the trees, breathe freely and 
find peace of mind—a spot where, as Shakes¬ 
peare says, "the birds chant melody on every 
bush.” 
Mr. Purdy being something of a hunter, al¬ 
ways had been anxious to teach me to handle 
a rifle, and as our new home was just outside 
of the city limits, we found an opportunity to 
shoot without fear of violating a city ordinance. 
After many days of vexing trial to him, in which 
I had repeatedly failed to hit a mark that he 
had nailed to a tree, he said: “I think I will 
build a barn and see if you can hit the side of 
it.’ He built the barn, but we never used it 
as a target, for I had decided long before that 
hunting with a gun would never be my forte. I 
began hunting with my eyes and these are some 
of the things I saw: 
of the porch that extends around three sides of 
our house they have found inviting little nooks, 
and at least a dozen nests are built there in a 
season. When it is known that a single pair 
of sparrows will raise twenty-four young in a 
year, one can see that we have harbored no small 
crop of sparrows. It is interesting to watch 
them in the latter part of April constructing 
their nests of grasses and twigs, many of the 
latter being much longer than themselves. How 
industriously they work! I watch them from 
our chamber windows and wonder what inge¬ 
nuity leads them to the spot where they find 
their materials, and how they learn to construct 
nests so warm and secure. While I admire their 
industry, I scold them at the same time, for they 
are not very good housekeepers, are noisy and 
keep the porches untidy at the maid's expense. 
Then when their young leave the nest no mother 
was ever more proud of her first born than they. 
They fly to the ground with their little ones and 
tree, and she dropped the cherry she held in her 
bill. I picked it up and found it contained a 
worm. She was able to discriminate between 
those that had worms and those that had not. 
While thus engaged with the cherries, I saw a 
great fluttering going on in the tall grass in the 
rear of the yard. From a distance I watched 
the same robin that had been in the tree and a 
tiny sparrow fight for the possession of a big 
green grasshopper that had hopped just once too 
far for his own good. The sparrow won in the 
contest and flew with her prey to her young that 
were hiding in the tall grass, while the robin 
again sought the cherry tree. 
This robin had built a nest in the eaves of 
our carriage house, and I had a great desire to 
look into it. I climbed out on the roof of the 
barn and by easy stages slid to the eaves. There 
was the nest composed of such a conglomera¬ 
tion of materials as I never had seen in so small 
a compass, and in its depths shone three tiny 
