sometimes climb trees, but I doubt if either a squirrel or a rat could
have passed the entrance.

Probably few persons have ever suspected the cat-bird of being an
egg-sucker; I do not know that she has ever been accused of such
a thing, but there is something uncanny and disagreeable about her,
which I at once understood, when I one day caught her in the very act
of going through a nest of eggs.

A pair of the least fly-catchers, the bird which says chebec, chebec,
and 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 fly-catchers the same trick;
so, as I sat with my book in a summer-house 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 did
not desert the nest, as I had feared they would, 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.