No matter what you do or what you don't do. One will perch on each side of you, and join the maddening chorus, driving every bird in the neighborhood either to join in the hue and cry (as do some of the sparrows), or to hide himself from the monster that has been discovered.
I tried to tire them out by sitting absolutely motionless; but three, who evidently had business in the vicinity, for each held a mouthful of worms, guarded me to right and left and in front, and never ceased their offensive remarks long enough to stuff those worms into the mouths waiting for them.
I was not able to convince them that I had no designs on robin households, and I had to own myself defeated again. Then and there I abandoned the search for the bluejay.
VIII.
THE BLUEJAY BABY.
My time of triumph came, however, a little later. Birds may securely hide their nests, but they cannot always silence their nestlings. So soon as little folk find their voices, whether their dress be feathers, or furs, or French cambric, they are sure to make themselves heard and seen.
One morning, two or three weeks after I had given up the bluejay search, and consoled myself with looking after baby cat-birds and thrushes, I started out as usual for a walk. I turned naturally into a favorite path beside a brook that danced down the mountain below the house. It was near the bottom of a deep gully, where I had come to grief in my search for a veery baby.
As I passed slowly up, looking well to my steps, and listening for birds, I heard a note that aroused me at once,—the squawk of a bluejay. It came from the higher ground, and I looked about for a pathway up the steep bank on my right. At the most promising point I could select I started my climb. Unfortunately that very spot had been already chosen by a small rill, a mere trickle of water, to come down. It was not big enough to make itself a channel and keep to it, but it sprawled all over the land. Now it lingered in the cows' footprints and made a little round pool of each; then it loitered on a level bit of ground, and soaked it full; when it reached a comfortable bed between the roots of trees, it almost decided to stay and be a pond, and it dallied so long before it found a tiny opening and straggled out, that if it did not result in a pond, it did accomplish a treacherous quagmire. In fact that undecided, feeble-minded streamlet totally "demoralized" the whole hillside, and with its vagaries I had to contend at every step of my way.