about the door, while the intimate glimpses of family life _ 
of these woodsy neighbors show the kinship of all. 
- Yesterday, a father Western House Wren was watched 
as he stood guard on the peak of the roof, just above the 
box from which the first brood was coaxed several days 
ago. The mother bird has safely hidden the youngsters 
of the family in the California lilac jungle, back of the house, 
from which she occasionally brings one of her darlings near 
to the mulberry tree below the old home. | 
Sometimes, she gives this favored youngling a fine fat 
mouthful, and slips into the grass under the tree. If she 
finds a particularly good twig, she may rush with it to the 
old nest in the box, while baby teases and the pater nearly 
bursts with song. | 
If she takes too long a time to weave in her treasure, 
he will lean over the edge of the roof, or even drop down to 
the doorstep. There he will edge in a stealthy fashion, to 
a place where, by twisting his head, he can look slantwise, 
with one of his brown eyes, into the nest to see what she is 
doing. Woe falls upon him if he is too close when she 
decides that she will return to their little one! The remarks 
she makes, in wren syllables, as she pushes him out of 
her way, seem fairly to daze him, for her temper has been 
raised to a white heat by her efforts to provide, alone, food 
and hiding places for their chattering brood. | 
He takes revenge on a flock of Tree Swallows that are 
trying to steal a home. Esma called as she went to the 
garden this morning; and there, at each of the three boxes 
in the gable, sat a male Tree Swallow with his metallic, blue- 
sreen back shining in the sunlight and his white breast 
puffed out with the pride of proprietorship. Above them 
the former owner of the gable stood on the very tips of his 
toes, his lifted wings almost touching as they fluttered 
above his back, while he said things in a language that 
must not be translated. 
They paid not the e slightest attention to him, but when — 
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