6 TA PAGS WB ON, eB ee ele 
from which a son survived and took up his territory two-thirds of a 
mile from his birthplace. None of his songs resembled those of his 
father. On May 24, 1932, I had the pleasure of banding two grand- 
children of my beloved 4M. 
Although Blueberry had rejoined 4M, some enemy must have 
caught her in April. The next month, 4M had a new wife, a bird 
banded in the nest the previous year. Unfortunately their nest was 
broken up and the young mate disappeared. The same thing happened 
the following year with his mate Sweetbriar. 
In 1934, however, with Goldenrod he had the satisfaction of rais- 
ing a brood once more, and from this nesting a daughter survived; 
she was a resident and settled only 50 yards from her birthplace. 
When Goldenrod returned in 1985, 4M was already mated to a dis- 
agreeable bird I named Xantippe. Goldenrod found another husband 
some 400 yards away. 
Xantippe appeared to care little for her husband, driving him at 
times in an ill-tempered way, and also tyrannized over a pair of neigh- 
boring song sparrows, the 221s. She started to build on April 20, 
but worked in a half-hearted manner and did not lay her first egg 
for thirteen days! Three days later a house wren had punctured two 
of her eggs. I never saw Xantippe afterwards. 
4M sang and sang; on May 11 I took his all day record from his 
awakening at 4:44 to his last song at 7:48. In the fifteen hours he 
gave 2,305 songs. 
On the 28th his singing suddenly slackened. Upon investigation 
I found he had won a wife, and she was no other than Dandelion; 
221’s former mate, living right next door! One of her young had 
evidently wandered into 4M’s land, and she had followed it, deserting 
her poor husband. She built her nest in the same rosebush where 
Quarta and Rosemary had made theirs five and six years earlier. 
I was eager to make a detailed study of 4M’s care of his young, 
but an imperative engagement in Massachusetts would take me east 
just as the babies were due to hatch. I decided on an experiment; 
I exchanged Dandelion’s fresh eggs with a set that was ready to hatch. 
When I slipped into the blind I had fixed by her nest, I found that 
Dandelion had accepted the extraordinary precocity of her family with 
the utmost calm, but 4M apparently was unaware of the event. A 
fellow ornithologist had promised to take pictures of the nest and 
the next morning I was out early with anticipations of watching 4M’s 
devotion to the babies. The nest was overturned and its contents 
gone. 
The birds were not discouraged; Dandelion built her third nest 
in a mass of bed straw, but again fate was against them. A gardener 
laid bare the nest with its two eggs. The next day the only new egg 
was a cowbird’s. I trust the pair had better luck with their fourth 
attempt! 
Since we usually left Columbus for a part of the summer my 
records as to 4M’s family life are not complete. He might have got 
a second mate in 1928 and possibly a third one in 1932; he probably 
