his rich
and triumphant song from the tallest tree he can find, and fairly
challenges you to come and look for his treasures in his vicinity. But
you will not find them if you go. The nest is somewhere on the outer
circle of his song; he is never so imprudent as to take up his stand
very near it. The artists who draw those cosy little pictures of a
brooding mother-bird with the male perched but a yard away in full song,
do not copy from nature. The thrasher's nest I found thirty or forty
rods from the point where the male was wont to indulge in his brilliant
recitative. It was in an open field under a low ground-juniper. My dog
disturbed the sitting bird as I was passing near. The nest could be
seen only by lifting up and parting away the branches. All the arts of
concealment had been carefully studied. It was the last place you would
think of looking, and, if you did look, nothing was visible but the
dense green circle of the low-spreading juniper. When you approached,
the bird would keep her place till you had begun to stir the branches,
when she would start out, and, just skimming the ground, make a bright
brown line to the near fence and bushes. I confidently expected that
this nest would escape molestation, but it did not. Its discovery by
myself and dog probably opened the door for ill luck, as one day, not
long afterward, when I peeped in upon it, it was empty. The proud song
of the male had ceased from his accustomed tree, and the pair were seen
no more in that vicinity.

The phoebe-bird is a wise architect, and perhaps enjoys as great an
immunity from danger, both in its person and its nest, as any other
bird. Its modest, ashen-gray suit is the color of the rocks where it
builds, and the moss of which it makes such free use gives to its nest
the look of a natural growth or accretion. But when it comes into the
barn or under the shed to build, as it so frequently does, the moss is
rather out of place. Doubtless in time the bird will take the hint, and
when she builds in such places will leave the moss out. I noted but two
nests, the summer I am speaking of: one, in a barn, failed of issue, on
account of the rats, I suspect, though the little owl may have been the
depredator; the other, in the woods, sent forth three young. This latter
nest was most charmingly and ingeniously placed. I discovered it while
in quest of pond-lilies, in a long, deep level stretch of water in the
woods. A large tree had blown over at