eaten by the blue-jays just after the hatching,--so were the young
grosbeaks in a nearby tree, but the cedar waxwings were slain and
eaten by the cannibalistic grackles. A blue-jay is just approaching
the wood pewee's nest in the burr oak, but the doughty husband does
battle with the fierceness of a kingbird and chases him away. Three
tiny birdlings, covered with hairs soft and white as the down of a
thistle, are in the nest, which is saddled snugly to the fork of a
horizontal tree. In another nest, near by, the three eggs have only
just been laid. The path which used to run under the over-hanging
trees is grown up with grasses. Here the slender rush grows best, and
makes a dark crease among the taller and lighter-green grasses,
showing where the path winds. Twenty feet overhead, on the slender
branch of a white oak, is a tiny knot, looking scarcely larger than
the cup of a mossy-cup acorn. It is the nest of the ruby-throated
hummingbird, so well concealed by the leaves and by the lichens
fastened to its exterior that it would not have been noticed at all
but for the whirling wings of the exquisite creature a month ago. Her
two tiny eggs have since been safely hatched and the young birds
reared; now the nest is empty, a prize to be taken and preserved for
future study and admiration.

At the foot of a figwort stalk in the pasture, shielded by a little
sprig of choke-cherry and a wisp of grasses, a new nest is being
builded. That is why the chewink sings so happily from dawn till dark.
His summer song is now heard more often than his spring song. Through
April, May and June he sings:

Fah do do'-do'-do'-do'-do'

But now, this song is heard more often: