f the returning
parents. They had been attending to their regular morning work, and both
brought food for those youngsters, who woke inopportunely--as babies
will--and demanded it instantly.

Junco--for he was the head of this household--paused on a twig near by,
opened and shut his beautiful white-bordered tail, in the embarrassing
consideration whether he should go in before our eyes and take the risk
of our intentions, or let his evidently starving offspring suffer. He
"eyed us over;" he waited till his modest little spouse, acting from
feeling rather than from judgment (as was to be expected from one of her
unreasoning sex), had slipped in from below, administered her morsel to
those precious babies, and escaped unharmed. Then he plucked up courage,
boldly entered his door, gave a poke behind it, and flew away.

A week later, after we had called as usual one morning and found the
house empty, he brought his pretty snow-birdlings in their tidy striped
bibs up to the grove at the back door, where we often heard his sharp
trilling little song, and saw him working like some bigger papas to keep
the dear clamorous mouths filled.

The Junco neighborhood was a populous part of our calling district.
Behind his cave, in a high tree, lived a family of golden-winged
woodpeckers, who "laughed" and talked as loud as they liked, scorning to
look upon the two spies so far below them. Not quite so self-possessed
and bold were they a little later, when madam came up to the grass by
the farmhouse with her young son to teach him to dig, for that is what
she did. He was a canny youngster, though he was shy, and had no notion
of being left in the lurch for a moment. If mamma flew to the fence, he
instantly followed; did she return to the ground, baby was in a second
at her side demanding attention. On one occasion while I was watching
them behind my blind, the mother managed to slip away from him and
disappear. In a moment he realized his deserted condition, stretched up,
like a lost chicken, looking about on every side, and calling, in a most
plaintive tone, "pe-au! au!" and then, "au! au! pe-au!" When at length
he saw his mother, he burst into a loud cry of delight, and flew into a
locust-tree, where I heard for a long time low complaining cries, as if
he reproached her for leaving her baby alone on the fence.

On the right of the home of the golden wings, in a sapling not more than
five feet from the ground, was the residence of a