song, for
remember it is June, the wooing and nesting time of our feathered
friends, when their songs and their plumes are in perfection. The
love-song of this particular chewink is simply his usual silver-bell
peal, with the addition of two rich notes in tremolo; first a note lower
in the scale than the bell, then a note higher, each a soft, delicious,
rapturous utterance impossible to describe, but enchanting to hear.

The nest is doubtless close by, but it will be lost time to hunt for it
in a wilderness of bushes like this, for it is a mere cup in the
ground, hidden under the thickest shrubs that the brown-clad spouse of
the towhee can find. If we did uncover it we might not recognize it, so
perfectly do the colors of the birds, old and young, and even of the
eggs, harmonize with the earth in which it is placed.

I once found, in another place a nest full of chewink babies. It was
where a patch of sage bushes stretched down the mountain, bordered by a
thick clump of oak brush seven or eight feet high. My attention was
called to it by the owner himself, who alighted on the oaks with a beak
full of food, and at once began to utter his cry of distress, or warning
to his mate. The moment he began I heard a rustle of wings behind me,
and turning quickly had a glimpse of the shy dame, skulking around a
sage bush. A little search revealed the nest, carefully hidden under the
largest branch of the shrub. It was a deep cup, sunk into the ground to
the brim, and three young birds opened their months to be fed when I
parted the leaves above them.

Studying a nest among the sage bushes is not so easy as one might
imagine. This was so closely covered by the low-growing branches that I
could see it only by holding them one side. Moreover the sage is what is
called in the books a social plant; where there is one there may be a
thousand, as like each other as so, many peas. The particular bush that
hid my chewink babies had to be marked, as one would mark the special
tuft of grass that hides a bobolink's nest.

[Sidenote: _AMONG THE SAGE BUSHES._]

However, I spent an hour or two every day in the sage patch, watching
the wind sweep over it in silvery waves, and getting acquainted with the
nesting-birds. All sorts of man[oe]uvres the father of the family tried
on me, such as going about carrying food conspicuously in the mouth,
then pretending to visit a far-off spot and returning without it; but he
always ended by mounting th