Barely light enough was admitted to enable one to make out the number of eggs, which was six, at the bottom of the dim interior. While one was peering in and trying to get his head out of his own light, the bird would startle him by a queer kind of puffing sound. She would not leave her nest like most birds, but really tried to blow, or scare, the intruder away; and after repeated experiments I could hardly refrain from jerking my head back when that little explosion of sound came up from the dark interior.
One night the nest was harried. A slight trace of hair or fur at the entrance led me to infer that some small animal was the robber.
A weasel might have done it, as they sometimes climb trees, but I doubt if either a squirrel or a rat could have passed the entrance.
A pair of the least flycatchers, the bird which is a small edition of the pewee, one season built their nest where I had them for many hours each day under my observation. The nest was a very snug and compact structure placed in the forks of a small maple about twelve feet from the ground. The season before a red squirrel had harried the nest of a wood thrush in this same tree, and I was apprehensive that he would serve the flycatchers the same trick; so, as I sat with my book in a summerhouse near by, I kept my loaded gun within easy reach.
One egg was laid, and the next morning, as I made my daily inspection of the nest, only a fragment of its empty shell was to be found. This I removed, mentally imprecating the rogue of a red squirrel. The birds were much disturbed by the event, but after much inspection of it and many consultations together, concluded, it seems, to try again.
Two more eggs were laid, when one day I heard the birds utter a sharp cry, and on looking up I saw a cat-bird perched upon the rim of the nest, hastily devouring the eggs. I soon regretted my precipitation in killing her, because such interference is generally unwise. It turned out that she had a nest of her own with five eggs in a spruce tree near my window.
Then this pair of little flycatchers did what I had never seen birds do before: they pulled the nest to pieces and rebuilt it in a peach tree not many rods away, where a brood was successfully reared. The nest was here exposed to the direct rays of the noonday sun, and to shield her young when the heat was greatest, the mother-bird would stand above them with wings slightly spread, as other birds have been known to do under like circumstances.
III
| peculiar | species | expressive | courage |
| curious | dismay | desperate | assault |
| subtle | rescue | deranged | enemy |