likewise the indigo bird; but not one can boast the lovely and
indescribable shade, with its silvery reflections, that adorns the
lazuli. Across the breast, under the blue, is a broad band of chestnut,
like the breast color of our bluebird, and back of that is white, while
the wings and tail are dark. Altogether, he is charming to look upon.
Who would not prefer him about the yard to the squawking house sparrow,
or even the squabbling chippy?

My catching the pair at dinner was not an accident; I soon found out
that they lived there, and had settled upon a row of tall raspberry
bushes that separated the garden from the lawn for their summer home.
Madam was already at work collecting her building materials, and very
soon the fragile walls of her pretty nest were formed in an upright
crotch of the raspberries, about a foot below the top.

Naturally, I was greatly interested in the fairy house building, and
often inspected the work while the little dame was out of sight. One
day, however, as I was about to part the branches to look in, I heard
an anxious "phit," and glanced up to see the owner alight on the lowest
limb of a peach-tree near by. Of course I turned away at once,
pretending that I was just passing, and had no suspicion of her precious
secret in the raspberries, and hoping that she would not mind. But she
did mind, very seriously; she continued to stand on that branch with an
aggrieved air, as if life were no longer worth living, now that her home
was perhaps discovered. Without uttering a sound or moving a muscle, so
far as I could see, she remained for half an hour before she accepted my
taking a distant seat and turning my attention to dragonflies as an
apology, and ventured to visit her nest again. After that I made very
sure that she was engaged elsewhere before I paid my daily call.

The dragonflies, by the way, were well worth looking at; indeed, they
divided my interest with the birds. So many and such variety I never
noticed elsewhere, and they acted exactly like fly-catching birds,
staying an hour at a time on one perch, from which every now and then
they sallied out, sweeping the air and returning to the perch they had
left. Sometimes I saw four or five of them at once, resting on different
dead twigs in the yard the other side of the lawn, and I have even seen
one knock a fellow-dragonfly off a favorite perch and take it himself.

They were very beautiful, too: some with wings of transparent white