old nests.

One morning in May I was out at gray dawn, and stealing gently
through the woods, whose dead leaves were so wet that no rustle
was made. I chanced to pass under the old nest, and was surprised
to see a black tail sticking over the edge. I struck the tree a smart
blow, off flew a crow, and the secret was out. I had long suspected
that a pair of crows nested each year about the pines, but now I
realized that it was Silverspot and his wife. The old nest was
theirs, and they were too wise to give it an air of spring-cleaning
and housekeeping each year. Here they had nested for long, though
guns in the hands of men and boys hungry to shoot crows were
carried under their home every day. I never surprised the old
fellow again, though I several times saw him through my
telescope.

One day while watching I saw a crow. crossing the Don Valley
with something white in his beak. He flew to the mouth of the
Rosedale Brook, then took a short flight to the Beaver Elm. There
he dropped the white object, and looking about gave inc a chance
to recognize my old friend Silverspot. After a minute he picked up
the white thing--a shell--and walked over past the spring, and here,
among the docks and the skunk-cabbages, he unearthed a pile of
shells and other white, shiny things. He spread them out in the sun,
turned them over, turned them one by one in his beak, dropped
them, nestled on them as though they were eggs, toyed with them
and gloated over them like a miser. This was his hobby, his
weakness. He could not have explained why he enjoyed them, any
more than a boy can explain why he collects postage-stamps, or a
girl why she prefers pearls to rubies; but his pleasure in them was