raspberry, and blackberries
were ready to follow; choke-cherries completed the list, and lasted till
into the fall. The insect enemies of fruit were there in armies.

Its constant supply of food, its shelter from the winds on every side,
and its admirable hiding-places for nests, made this warm, sunny corner
the chosen home of many birds. Warblers were there from early spring,
heard, though not always seen. Veeries nested on its borders,
woodpeckers haunted the dead trees at the edge, and all the birds of the
neighborhood paid visits to it.

We had not waited long when the head of the cuckoo family appeared. He
saw us instantly, and, I regret to say, was no more reconciled to our
presence than he had been on the previous occasion; but he showed his
displeasure in a different way. He rushed about in the trees, crying,
"cuck-a-ruck, cuck-a-ruck," running out even to the tip of slender
branches that seemed too slight to bear his weight. When his feelings
entirely overcame him he flew away, and though we remained fifteen
minutes, no one came to the nest.

The day after this display of unkindly feeling toward us we passed down
the cuckoo path, saw Madam on the nest, and at once determined to wait
and see what new demonstration her mate would invent to express his
emotions. My comrade threw herself down full length on the dead leaves
beside the path, where she could bask in the sunlight, while I sat in
the shade close by.

After some time we saw the cuckoo stealing in by a roundabout back way
through the low growth in the edge of the wood. He was coming with
supplies, for a worm dangled from his beak. He had nearly reached the
nest--in fact was not two feet away--when his eyes fell upon us. He
stopped as if paralyzed. We remained motionless, almost breathless, but
he did not take his eyes off us, nor attempt to relieve himself of that
worm. Still we did not move; arms began to ache, feet tingled with
"going to sleep," every joint stiffened, and I began to be afraid I
should find myself turned to stone. Still that bird never moved an
eyelid, so far as we could see.

It was fully twenty-five minutes that we three stared at each other, all
struck dumb. But Nature asserted herself in us before it did in him. The
sun was hot, and the mosquitoes far from dumb. We yielded as gracefully
as we could under the circumstances, and left him there as motionless as
a "mounted specimen" in a glass case.

The next morning we started ou