the edge of the water, and its
dense mass of up-turned roots, with the black, peaty soil filling the
interstices, was like the fragment of a wall several feet high, rising
from the edge of the languid current. In a niche in this earthy wall,
and visible and accessible only from the water, a phoebe had built her
nest, and reared her brood. I paddled my boat up and came alongside
prepared to take the family aboard. The young, nearly ready to fly, were
quite undisturbed by my presence, having probably been assured that no
danger need be apprehended from that side. It was not a likely place for
minks, or they would not have been so secure.

I noted but one nest of the wood pewee, and that, too, like so many
other nests, failed of issue. It was saddled upon a small dry limb of a
plane-tree that stood by the roadside, about forty feet from the ground.
Every day for nearly a week, as I passed by I saw the sitting bird upon
the nest. Then one morning she was not in her place, and on examination
the nest proved to be empty--robbed, I had no doubt, by the red
squirrels, as they were very abundant in its vicinity, and appeared to
make a clean sweep of every nest. The wood pewee builds an exquisite
nest, shaped and finished as if cast in a mould. It is modeled
without and within with equal neatness and art, like the nest of the
humming-bird and the little gray gnat-catcher. The material is much
more refractory than that used by either of these birds, being, in the
present case, dry, fine cedar twigs; but these were bound into a shape
as rounded and compact as could be moulded out of the most plastic
material. Indeed, the nest of this bird looks precisely like a large,
lichen-covered, cup-shaped excrescence of the limb upon which it is
placed. And the bird, while sitting, seems entirely at ease. Most birds
seem to make very hard work of incubation. It is a kind of martyrdom
which appears to tax all their powers of endurance. They have such a
fixed, rigid, predetermined look, pressed down into the nest and as
motionless as if made of cast-iron. But the wood pewee is an exception.
She is largely visible above the rim of the nest. Her attitude is easy
and graceful; she moves her head this way and that, and seems to take
note of whatever goes on about her; and if her neighbor were to drop in
for a little social chat, she could doubtless do her part. In fact,
she makes light and easy work of what, to most other birds, is such a
serious a