Barton County democrat. [volume] (Great Bend, Kan.) 1885-1915, 1888-08-16
and there along September fences and

sell In The habit OF observation. i ma
that I now see and hear the birds
whetherI am paying attention or not.
My perceptions take note of things al
most automatically. A new note, a
new call, new form and quickly be-
come conscious of it. My eye and ear
seem to discriminate of themselves.
The summer just gone I passed at a
farm house On the skirts of the North
ern Catskills. How could / help but
see what no one else of all the people
about seemed to notice-a little bob
tailed song-sparrow building her nest
in a pile of dry brush very near the
kitchen door. 1t was late in July, and
she had doubtless reared one brood in
the earlier season. Her toilet was de-
cidedly the worse for wear. 1 noted
her day after day very busy about the
fence and ounce bushes between
the house and milk house with her
beak full of coarse straw and hay. To
a casual observer she seemed fitting
about aimlessly, carrying straws from
place to place just to amuse herself.
When / came to watch her closely to
learn the place of her nest, she seemed
to suspect my intention and made
many little feints and movements cal
culated to put me off the track. But /
would not be misled and presently had
her secret. The male did not assist
her at all, but sang much of the time
in an apple tree or upon the fence, on
the other side of the house. Those
artists who paint pictures of devoted
male-birds singing from the branch
that holds the nest, or its immediate
vicinity, do not give the birds credit
for all the wit they possess. They
do not advertise the place where their
yonder indigo bird shaking out its
happy song from the topmost twig of
the maple or oak; its nest is many
yards away in low bush not more
than three feet from the ground.
And so with nearly all the birds.
The one thing to which they bend all
their wits is the concealment of their
nests. When you come upon the sit
ting bird she will almost let you touch
her rather than'to start up before you
and thus betray her secret. The bobo-
link begins to sco1d and to circle about
you as soon as you enter the meadow
where his nest is so we'll hidden. He
does not wait to show his anxiety till
you are almost upon it. By no action
of his can you get a clew as to its ex-
act whereabouts.
The SOng-SparrOw nearly always
builds upon the ground, but my little
neighbor Of last July laid the founda-
tions of her domicile a foot or more
above the soil. And what mass of
straws and twigs she did collect to-
getheri How coarse and careless and
aimless at first; a mere lot of rubbish
dropped upon the tangle of dry limbs,
but presently how it began to refine
and come into shape in the center! till
there was the most exquisite hair-lined
cup set about by a chaos of coarse
straws and branches. What a process
of evolution! The completed nest was
foreshadowed by the first stiff straw,
but how far off is yet that dainty
casket with its complement of speckled
eggs! The nest was so placed that it
had for canopy a large broad, droop-
ing leaf of yellow dock. This
formed a perfect shield against both
sun and rain, while it served to
conceal it from any curious eyes from
above-from the cat, for instance
prowling along the top of the wall.
Before the eggs had Matched the
docken leaf wilted and dried and
fell down upon the nest. But the
mother bird managed to insinuate her.
self beneath it. and went on with her
brooding all the same.
Then 1 al ranged an artificial cover
of leaves and branches which shielded
her charge till they had flown away.
A mere trifie was this little bob-tailed
bird with her arts and her secrets, and
the male with his song, and yet the
pair gave a touch of something to those
days and to that place which l would
not willingly have missed.
have spoken of nature as a stage
wherein the play, more or less inter-
rupted and indirect, constantly goes
on. One amusing actor upon that
stage one season upon my own
premises, was certain male bluebird.
To the spectator it was comedy, but
to the actor himself I imagine it was
quite serious business. The bird and
his mate had nest in a box upon an
clubhouse. In this clubhouse was a
window with one pane broken
out. At almost any hour in the day
from spring to early summer, the male
bird could be seen fiuttering and peck
ing against this window from the out
side. Did he want to get within?
Apparently so, and yet he would now
and then pause in his demonstra-
tions, alight in the frame of
the broken pane, look intently
within and after a moment resume his
assault upon the window. The people