a sunny branch that arched against
the blue sky. It sat close to the branch beside the green leaves and
dressed its feathers or dozed quietly in the sun. We had other visitors
that the house owners did not accept so willingly. The gnatcatchers up
the sand ditch whose nest had been broken up by the thief-in-the-night
did not object to brown chippies, but perhaps, if this were the same
pair, they had been made suspicious by their trouble. In any case, when
a brown chippie lit on a limb near the nest, quite accidentally I
believe, and turned to look at the pretty structure, quite innocently I
feel sure, the little gnats fell on him tooth and nail, and when he hid
under the leaves where they could not reach him they fluttered above the
leaves, and the moment he ventured from under cover were both at him
again so violently that at the first opportunity he took to his wings.
There was one curious thing about this attack and expulsion; the gnats
did not utter a word during the whole affair! I had never known them to
be silent before when anything was going on--rarely when there wasn't.

Another morning when I rode in there was a great commotion up in the
oak. A chorus of small scolding voices, and a fluttering of little wings
among the branches told that something was wrong, while a large form
moving deliberately about in the tree showed the intruder to be a blue
jay! Aha! the gossips would wag their heads. I disapprove of gossip, but
as a truthful reporter am obliged to say that I saw the blue jay pitch
down into the brush with something white in his bill--perhaps a
cocoon--and that thereupon a great weeping and wailing arose from the
little folk up in the treetop. A big brown California chewink stood by
and watched the--robbery(?), great big fellow that he was; and not once
offered to take the little fellows' part. I felt indignant. Why didn't
he pitch into the big bully and drive him off before he had stolen the
little birds' egg--if it was an egg. A grosbeak called _ick'_ from the
treetop, but thought he'd better not meddle; and--it was a pair of
wren-tits who looked out from a brush screen and then skulked off,
chuckling to themselves, I dare say, that some one else was up to their
tricks. It gave my faith in birds a great shock, this, together with the
pillage of the gnat's nest by the thief-in-the-night. My spleen was
especially turned against the brown chewink; he certainly was a good
fighter, and might at least have he