the limb, making it the highest
hummingbird's nest I had ever seen. It was attached to a red leaf--to
mark the spot, perhaps--one often wonders how a bird can come back twice
to the same leaf in a forest. How one little home does make a place
habitable! From a bare silent woods it becomes a dwelling-place.
Everything seemed to centre around this little nest, then the only one
in the grove; the tiny pinch of down became the most important thing in
the woods. It was the castle which the trees surrounded.

When I first found the nest it held two white warm eggs about as large
as peas, and I became much interested in watching their progress, often
riding down to see how they were getting on. The hummer did not return
my interest. She was nervous, darting off when Billy shook himself or
when the shadow of a soaring turkey buzzard fell over the nest; but in
spite of that we made ourselves quite at home before her door. I would
dismount and sit on the ground, leaning against a blue gum, while Billy
stood by, in a bower of green leaves, with ears pricked forward
thoughtfully, and a dreamy look of satisfaction in his eyes.
Hummingbirds are such dainty things. Once when this one alighted on the
rim of her nest she whirred herself right down inside. Soon she began to
act so strangely for a brooding bird that, when she flew, I went to feel
in the nest. The tips of my fingers touched what felt like round balls,
but, not satisfied, I pulled down the bough and found one round ball and
one mite of a gray back with microscopic yellow hairs on each side of
the spine. The whole tiny body seemed to throb with its heart beats. I
wondered how such a midget could ever be fed, but found, as in the case
of the hummer under the little lover's tree, that the mother gave its
food most gently, reserving her violent pumping for a more suitable age;
though one would as soon think of poking a needle down a baby's throat
as that bill.

Often, while watching the nest, my thoughts wandered away to the grove
itself. The brown earth between the rows was barred by alternate lines
of sunlight and shadow, and the vista of each avenue ended in blue sky.
Sometimes cool ocean breezes would penetrate the forest. The rows of
trees, with their gently swaying, interlacing branches, cast moving
shadows over the sun-touched leafy floor, giving a white light to the
grove; for the undersides of the young eucalyptus leaves are like snow.
From the stiff, sickle-shaped u