Upon The Tree-Tops

by Olive Thorne Miller

I long ago came to the conclusion that the ability to find nests easily is as truly a natural gift as the ability to become a musician, or the power to see a statue in a block of marble. That gift is not mine. I have an almost invincible repugnance to poking into bushes and thrusting aside branches to discover who has hidden there. Moreover, if a bird seems anxious or alarmed, I never can bear to disturb her. Nor indeed do I care to find many nests. A long list of nests found in a season gives me no pleasure; how many birds belong to a certain district does not concern me in the least. But if I have really studied one or two nests, and made acquaintance with the tricks and manners of the small dwellers therein, I am satisfied and happy.

While we lingered in the little hemlock grove, enraptured with the white-throat, and feeling that

"Here were the place to lie alone all day
On shadowed grass, beneath the blessed trees,"

a distant note reached our ever-listening ears. It was the voice of a warbler, and a most alluring song. Such indeed we found it, for on the instant the Enthusiast sprang to her feet, alert to her finger-tips, crying, "That's the bird we're after!" adding as usual, as she started across the field, "You sit still! I won't go far," while as usual, also, I snatched my things and followed.

The song was in the tone of one of the most bewitching as well as the most elusive of warblers, the black-throated green; a bird not so big as one's thumb, with a provoking fondness for the tops of the tallest trees, where foliage is thickest, and for keeping in constant motion, flitting from twig to twig, and from tree to tree, throwing out as he goes

"The sweetest sound that ever stirred
A warbler's throat."

This one was tireless, as are all of his tribe, and led us a weary dance over big, steep-sided rocks, through more and more bogs, over a fence, and out of our open fields into deep woods.

"YOU SIT STILL."

Now, my companion in these tramps has a rooted opinion that she is easily fatigued, and must rest frequently; and I have no doubt it is true, when she has no strong interest to urge her on. So she used to burden herself with a clumsy waterproof, to throw on the ground to sit upon; and in compliance with this notion (which was most amusing to those whom she tired out in her tramps), whenever she thought of it—that is, when the bird voice was still for a moment—she would seek a sloping bank, or a place beside a tree where she could lean, and then throw herself down, determined to rest. But always in one minute or less, the warbler would be sure to begin again, when away went good resolutions and fatigue, and she sprang up like a Jack-in-the-box, saying, of course, "You sit still; I'll just go on a little," and off we went over brake and brier.

While pursuing this vocal ignis fatuus I made a charming discovery. In one of the temporary pauses in our wild career, I was startled by the flight of a bird from the ground very near us, and, searching about, I soon found a veery's nest with one egg. It was daintily placed in a clump of brakes or big ferns, resting on a fallen stick, over and around which the brakes had grown.