708 
merely a little dry grass arranged in a 
thick bed of dry leaves. 
This was amid a thick undergrowth. 
Moving on intoa passage of large state- 
ly hemlocks, with only here and there a 
small beech or maple rising up into the 
perennial twilight, I paused to make 
out a note which was entirely new to 
me. It is stillin my ear. Though un- 
mistakably a bird note, it yet suggested 
the bleating of a tiny lambkin. Pres- 
ently the birds appeared,—a pair of 
the solitary vireo. They came flitting 
from point to point, alighting only for a 
moment at a time, the male silent, but 
the female uttering this strange, tender 
note. It was a rendering into some new 
sylvan dialect of the human sentiment 
of maidenly love. It was really pathetic 
in its sweetness and childlike confidence 
and joy. I soon discovered that the 
pair were building a nest upon a low 
branch a few yards from me. The male 
flew cautiously to the spot, and adjusted 
something, and the twain moved on, the 
female calling to her mate at intervals, 
love-e, love-e, with a cadence and tender- 
ness in the tone that rang in the ear long 
afterward. The nest was suspended 
to the fork of a small branch, as is usual 
with the vireos, plentifully lined with 
lichens, and bound and rebound with 
masses of coarse spider-webs. There 
was no attempt at concealment except 
_in the neutral tints, which made it look 
like a natural growth of the dim, gray 
woods. 
Continuing my random walk, I next 
paused in a low part of the woods, 
where the larger trees began to give 
place to a thick second growth that 
covered an old bark-peeling. JI was 
standing by a large maple, when a small 
bird darted quickly away from it, as if 
it might have come out of a hole near 
its base. As the bird paused a few 
yards from me, and began to chirp 
uneasily, my curiosity was at once ex- 
cited. When I saw it was the female 
mourning ground warbler, and remem- 
bered that the nest of this bird had 
not yet been seen by any naturalist, 
—that not even Dr. Brewer had ever 
seen the eggs, —I felt that here was 
Bird’ s-Nests. 
[June, 
something worth looking for. So I 
carefully began the search, exploring 
inch by inch the ground, the base 
and roots of the tree, and the various 
shrubby growths about it, till, finding 
nothing, and fearing I might really put 
my foot in it, I bethought me to with- 
draw to a distance and after some de- 
lay return again, and, thus forewarned, 
note the exact point from which the 
bird flew. This I did, and, returning, 
had little difficulty in discovering the 
nest. It was placed but a few feet from 
the maple-tree, in a bunch of ferns, and 
about six inches from the ground. It 
was quite a massive nest, composed en- 
tirely of the stalks and leaves of dry 
grass, with an inner lining of fine, dark 
brown roots. The eggs, three in num- 
ber, were of light flesh-color, uniformly 
specked with fine brown specks. The 
cavity of the nest was so deep that the 
back of the sitting bird sank below the 
edge. 
In the top of a tall tree, a short 
distance farther on, I saw the nest of 
the red-tailed hawk, —a large mass of 
twigs and dry sticks. The young had 
flown, but still lingered in the vicinity, 
and, as I approached, the mother bird 
flew about over me, squealing in a very 
angry, savage manner. Tufts of the 
hair and other mdigestible material of 
the common meadow mouse lay around 
on the ground beneath the nest. 
As I was about leaving the woods 
my hat almost brushed the nest of the 
red-eyed vireo, which hung basket-like 
on the end of a low, drooping branch of 
the beech. I should never have seen 
it had the bird kept her place. It con- 
tained three eggs of the bird’s own, and’ 
one of the cow bunting. The strange 
egg was only just perceptibly larger 
than the others, yet three days after, 
when I looked into the nest again and 
found all but one egg hatched, the 
young interloper was at least four times 
as large as either of the others, and 
with such a superabundance of bowels 
as to almost smother his bedfellows 
beneath them. That the intrudershould 
fare the same as the rightful occupants, 
and thrive with them, was more than 
