uite up
out of the nest, head erect and eyes eagerly watching for intruders. The
pewee, for all his tender and melancholy utterances, has a fiery spirit.
He hesitates not to clinch with a brother pewee, interpolates his
sweetest call into the hot chases, and even when resting between
encounters, spreads his tail, flutters his wings, and erects his crest
in a most warlike manner. The little dame was not a whit less vigilant
than her spouse. Let but a blackbird pass over and she was off in a
twinkling, pursuing him, pouncing down upon him savagely, and all the
time uttering her plaintive "pe-o-wee!" till her mate joined her, and
made it so uncomfortable for the big foe that he departed, protesting to
be sure in vigorous black-birdese, but taking good care to go. So
persistent were the pewees in these efforts, that in a few days they
convinced a pair of blackbirds (purple crow blackbirds) that this part
of the grove was no longer a thoroughfare, and whereas they had been
quite frequent visitors, they were now rarely seen.

The saucy robin who chose to insist upon his right to alight on their
tree, as he had always done, was harder to convince; in fact, he never
was driven away. Every day, and many times a day, arose the doleful cry
of distress. I always looked over from my seat on the other side of the
little open spot in the wood, and invariably saw a robin on the lower
part of the wild-cherry where the trunk divided, flirting his tail,
jerking his wings, and looking very wicked indeed. Down upon him came
one, sometimes two pewees. He simply ran up the sloping branch toward
their nest, hopped to another limb, every step bringing him nearer, the
pewees darting frantically at him--and at last took flight from the
other side; but not until he was quite ready. This drama was enacted
with clock-like regularity, neither party seeming to tire of its
repetition, till the happy day when the pewee baby could fly, and
appeared across the grove, near me.

One morning I noticed the anxious parents very busy on a small oak-tree,
but a clump of leaves made a perfect hiding place for the infant, and I
could not see it at first. There may have been more, although I saw but
one and heard but one baby cry, a prolonged but very low sound of pewee
quality. While their charge lingered so near me, I was treated to
another sensation by one of the pair,--a pewee song. The performer
alighted almost directly over my head, and began at once to sing