One season a pair of them built a nest in a Norway Spruce that stood
amid a dense growth of other ornamental trees near a large unoccupied
house. They sat down amid plenty. The wolf established himself in
the fold. The many birds--robins, thrushes, finches, vireos, pewees--
that seek the vicinity of dwellings (especially of these large country
residences with their many trees and park-like grounds), for the
greater safety of their eggs and young, were the easy and convenient
victims of these robbers. They plundered right and left, and were not
disturbed till their young were nearly fledged, when some boys, who had
long before marked them as their prize, rifled the nest.

The song-birds nearly all build low; their cradle is not upon the
tree-top. It is only birds of prey that fear danger from below more
than from above, and that seek the higher branches for their nests.
A line five feet from the ground would run above more than half the
nests, and one ten feet would bound more than three fourths of them.
It is only the oriole and the wood pewee that, as a rule, go higher
than this. The crows and jays and other enemies of the birds have
learned to explore this belt pretty thoroughly. But the leaves and
the protective coloring of most nests baffle them as effectually,
no doubt as they do the professional oölogist. The nest of the
red-eyed vireo is one of the most artfully placed in the wood. It is
just beyond the point where the eye naturally pauses in its search;
namely, on the extreme end of the lowest branch of the tree, usually
four or five feet from the ground. One looks up and down through the
tree,--shoots his eye-beams into it as he might discharge his gun at
some game hidden there, but the drooping tip of that low horizontal
branch--who would think of pointing his piece just there? If a crow or
other marauder were to alight upon the branch or upon those above it,