y around between
us, so that my staring would seem less pointed, and when one of the pair
flew to the ground to spy at me, hurriedly looked the other way to
remove his anxiety. His mate soon joined him, and the two doves walked
away together, fixed their feathers in the sun, stretched their wings,
and lazily picked at the ground. When one whirred back to the nest, the
other soon followed. The gentle lovers put their bills together, while,
unnoticed, I stood behind Billy, looking on and thinking that it was
little wonder such birds should rise from the ground with a musical
whirr.

Billy's oak was the last of the high trees in the garden. Above it was a
grassy space where bright wild flowers bloomed, and pretty cottontail
rabbits often went ambling over the soft turf. On one side of the
opening was a low stocky oak, full of balls of mistletoe, and on the
other a great blossoming bush buzzing with hummingbirds. The mistletoe
had begun to sap the little oak, and on one of its dead twigs a
hummingbird had taken to perching. I wondered if he were the idle mate
of one of my small garden builders, but he sat and sunned himself as if
his conscience were quite clear.

My first experience with gnatcatchers had been here. I suspected a nest,
and the ranchman's daughter went with me to hunt through the brush. She
cautioned me to look out for rattlesnakes, but the brush was so dense
and the ground so covered with crooked snake-like sticks that it was not
an easy matter to tell what you were stepping on. Then, the poison oak
was so thick that I felt like holding up my hands to avoid it. We pushed
our way through the dense chaparral, and my fearless companion got down
on her hands and knees to look through the tangle for the nest. It was
hard disagreeable work, even if one did not object to snakes, and we
were soon so tired that we were ready to sit down and let the birds show
us to their house. We might have saved ourselves all the trouble if we
had done this to begin with, for it was only a few moments before the
little pair went to the mistletoe oak, out in plain sight and within
easy reach--how they would have laughed in their sleeves had they known
what we were hunting for back in the brush! The nest was about the size
of a chilicothe pod, and so covered with lichen that it looked just like
a knot on the tree.

Around the blossoming bush the air fairly vibrated with hummers, darting
up into the sky, shooting down and chasing e