686 
probably be fruitless. My friend and I found 
a nest by accident one day, and then lost it 
again one minute afterward. I moved away 
a few yards to be sure of the mother-bird, 
charging my friend not to stir from his tracks. 
When I returned, he had moved two paces, 
he said (he had really moved four), and we 
spent a half hour stooping over the daisies 
and the buttercups, looking for the lost clew. 
We grew desperate, and fairly felt the ground 
over with our hands, but without avail. I 
marked the spot with a bush, and came the 
next day, and, with the bush as a center, 
moved aboutit in slowly increasing circles, coy- 
ering, I thought, nearly every inch of ground 
with my feet and laying hold of it with all the 
visual power I could command, till my pa- 
tience was exhausted and I gave up, baffled. 
I began to doubt the ability of the parent 
birds themselves to find it, and so secreted 
myself and watched. After much delay, the 
male bird appeared with food in his beak, and 
satisfying himself that the coast was clear, 
dropped into the grass which I had trodden 
down inmy search. Fastening my eye upon 
a particular meadow-lily, I walked straight. to 
the spot, bent down and gazed long and in- 
tently into the grass. Finally my eye separ- 
ated the nest and its young from its surround- 
ings. My foot had barely missed them in my 
search, but by how much they had escaped 
my eye I could not tell. Probably not by 
distance at all, but simply by unrecognition. 
They were virtually invisible.. The dark gray 
and yellowish brown dry grass and stubble 
of the meadow-bottom were exactly copied 
in the color of the half-fledged young. More 
than that, they hugged the nest so closely and 
formed such.a compact mass, that though 
there were five of them, they preserved the 
unit of expression,—no single head or form 
was defined; they were one, and that one was 
without shape or color, and not separable, 
except by closest scrutiny, from the one of 
the meadow-bottom. ‘That nest prospered, 
as bobolinks’ nests doubtless generally do; 
for, notwithstanding the enormous slaughter 
of the birds during their fall migrations by 
southern sportsmen, the bobolink appears to 
hold its own, and its music does not diminish 
in our northern meadows. 
Birds with whom the struggle for life is the 
sharpest seem to be more prolific than those 
whose nest and young are exposed to fewer 
dangers. The robin, the sparrows, the pewees, 
etc., will rear, or make the attempt to rear, 
two and sometimes three broods in a season; 
but the bobolink, the oriole, the kingbird, the 
goldfinch, the cedar-bird, the birds of prey, 
and the woodpeckers, that build in safe re- 
treats in the trunks of trees, have usually but 
THE TRAGEDIES OF THE NESTS. 
a single brood. If the bobolink reared two 
broods, our meadows would swarm with 
them. 
I noted three nests of the cedar-bird the 
past August in a single orchard, all produc- 
tive, but all with one or more unfruitful eggs 
in them. The cedar-bird is the most silent of 
our birds, having but a single fine note, so far 
as I have observed, but its manners are very 
expressive at times. No bird known to me is 
capable of expressing so much silent alarm 
while on the nest as this bird. As you ascend 
the tree and draw near it, it depresses its 
plumage and crest, stretches up its neck, and 
becomes the very picture of fear. Other birds, 
under like circumstances, hardly change their 
expression at all till they launch into the air, 
when by their voice they express anger rather _ 
than alarm. 
I have referred to the red squirrel as a de- 
stroyer of the eggs and young of birds. I 
think the mischief it does in this respect can 
hardly be overestimated. Nearly all birds 
look upon it as their enemy and attack and 
annoy it when it appears near their breeding 
haunts. Thus, I have seen the pewee, the 
cuckoo, the robin, and the wood-thrush pur- 
suing it with angry voice and gestures. If 
you wish the birds to breed and thrive in 
your orchard and groves, kill every red squir- 
rel that infests the place; kill every weasel 
also. The weasel is a subtle and arch enemy 
of the birds. It climbs trees and explores them 
with great ease and nimbleness. I have seen 
it do so on several occasions. One day during 
the past summer my attention was arrested by 
the angry notes of a pair of brown-thrashers 
that were flitting from bush to bush along an 
old stone row in a remote field. Presently I 
saw what it was that excited them—three 
large, red weasels or ermines coming along 
the stone wall and leisurely and half play- 
fully exploring every tree that stood near 
it. They had probably robbed the thrashers. 
They would go up the trees with great ease 
and glide serpent-like out upon the main 
branches. When they descended the tree’ 
they were unable to come straight down, 
like a squirrel, but went around it spirally. 
How boldly they thrust their heads out 
of the wall and eyed me and sniffed me, 
as I drew near,—their round, thin ears, 
their prominent, glistening, bead-like eyes, 
and the curving, snake-like motions of the 
head and neck being very noticeable. ‘They 
looked like blood-suckers and egg-suckers. 
They suggested something «extremely re- 
morseless and cruel. One could understand 
the alarm of the rats when they discover one 
of these fearless, subtle, and circumventing 
creatures threading their holes. To flee must 
