so took in farms and settlements
and villages and other mountain ranges that grew blue in the
distance.

The parent birds attracted my attention by appearing with food in
their beaks, and by seeming much put out. Yet so wary were they of
revealing the locality of their brood, or even of the precise tree
that held them, that I lurked around over an hour without gaining a
point on them. Finally a bright and curious boy who accompanied me
secreted himself under a low, projecting rock close to the tree in
which we supposed the nest to be, while I moved off around the
mountain-side. It was not long before the youth had their secret.
The tree, which was low and wide-branching, and overrun with
lichens, appeared at a cursory glance to contain not one dry or
decayed limb. Yet there was one a few feet long, in which, when my
eyes were piloted thither, I detected a small round orifice.

As my weight began to shake the branches, the consternation of both
old and young was great. The stump of a limb that held the nest was
about three inches thick, and at the bottom of the tunnel was
excavated quite to the bark. With my thumb I broke in the thin wall,
and the young, which were full-fledged, looked out upon the world
for the first time. Presently one of them, with a significant chirp,
as much as to say, "It is time we were out of this," began to climb
up toward the proper entrance. Placing himself in the hole, he
looked around without manifesting any surprise at the grand scene
that lay spread out before him. He was taking his bearings, and
determining how far he could trust the power of his untried wings to
take him out of harm's way. After a moment's pause, with a loud
chirrup, he launched out and made tolerable headway. The others
rapidly followed. Each one, as it started upward, from a sudden
impulse, contemptuously saluted the abandoned nest with its
excrement.

Though generally regular in their habits and instincts, yet the
birds sometimes seem as whimsical and capricious as superior
beings. One is not safe, for instance, in making any absolute
assertion as to their place or mode of building. Ground-builders
often get up into a bush, and tree-builders sometimes get upon the
ground or into a tussock of grass. The song sparrow, which is a
ground builder, has been known to build in the knothole of a fence
rail; and a chimney swallow once got tired of soot and smoke, and
fastened its nest on a rafter in a hay barn. A friend te