determined manner, and I dare say if I had sat down in his hole,
would have attacked me unhesitatingly. This I did not give him a chance
to do; but, not to be entirely outdone, attempted to set my feet on him
in no very gentle manner; but he whipped into his den beneath me with a
defiant snort. Farther on, a saucy chipmunk presumed upon my harmless
character to an unwonted degree also. I had paused to bathe my hands
and face in a little trout brook, and had set a tin cup, which I had
partly filled with strawberries as I crossed the field, on a stone at
my feet, when along came the chipmunk as confidently as if he knew
precisely where he was going, and, perfectly oblivious of my presence,
cocked himself up on the rim of the cup and proceeded to eat my
choicest berries. I remained motionless and observed him. He had eaten
but two when the thought seemed to occur to him that he might be doing
better, and he began to fill his pockets. Two, four, six, eight of my
berries quickly disappeared, and the cheeks of the little vagabond
swelled. But all the time he kept eating, that not a moment might be
lost. Then he hopped off the cup, and went skipping from stone to stone
till the brook was passed, when he disappeared in the woods. In two or
three minutes he was back again, and went to stuffing himself as
before; then he disappeared a second time, and I imagined told a friend
of his, for in a moment or two along came a bobtailed chipmunk, as if
in search of something, and passed up, and down, and around, but did
not quite hit the spot. Shortly, the first returned a third time, and
had now grown a little fastidious, for he began to sort over my
berries, and to bite into them, as if to taste their quality. He was
not long in loading up, however, and in making off again. But I had now
got tired of the joke, and my berries were appreciably diminishing, so
I moved away. What was most curious about the proceeding was, that the
little poacher took different directions each time, and returned from
different ways. Was this to elude pursuit, or was he distributing the
fruit to his friends and neighbors about, astonishing them with
strawberries for lunch?

But I am making slow headway toward finding the birds'-nests, for I had
set out on this occasion in hopes of finding a rare nest,--the nest of
the black-throated blue-backed warbler, which, it seemed, with one or
two others, was still wanting to make the history of our warblers
complete.