THE SADDLEBACK 167 
made it her business to be in the neighbourhood— 
a part of each supply had to be given to her to 
pass on to the nestlings. 
Studying the ways of one particular pair, I sat 
sometimes close in front of the nest; sometimes 
I covered their comings and goings from a seat 
high in an ironwood tree. I could well view from 
the one position the intimacies of feeding and 
sanitation; from the other, owing to the bare- 
ness of that part of the island, I could discover 
pretty accurately what the birds were about 
when not in the nest or feeding their young. 
To climb from the one observation post to the 
other was the work of a few seconds; it in no wise 
disturbed the birds. By this time, possibly be- 
lieving me to be some sort of fancy seal and 
equally innocuous, they did not care what I did. 
As in the woods there is no repetition, no 
action exactly reproduced, I will set down from 
my notes the gist of what I was able to glean 
of the proceedings of these Saddlebacks during 
three or four hours of one most heavenly summer 
day. The hen had been off her nest for some time 
when I took my seat among the ironwood boughs. 
On the wide expanse of comparatively open 
ground beneath I soon picked up the pair, and 
found that the hen was accepting large spiders 
from her mate. He then disappeared in the 
direction of an aspidium clump, where I could 
