Everyday Adventures

l mingled with the seethe and steam of a green blaze of growth that had leaped from the ooze to meet the summer. Through it all drifted tiny elusive puffs

ve their trefoil leaves. When the world was young they sprang from the tears which Aphrodite shed over the body of sl

hokeberry, whose flat white blossoms and reddish bark showed its kinship to the apple tree. Among the pools gleamed marsh marigolds fresh from the mint of May, while deep down in the grass at the foot of the tussocks

made its last stand two centuries ago. Where a fringe of trees showed the beginning of solid ground, a pair of hawks with long black-barred tails wheeled and screamed through the sky. "Geck, geck, geck, geck," they called, almost like a flicker, except that the tone was flatter. As they circled, both of them showed a snowy patch

marsh stood a bird between two and three feet high, of a streaked brown color, with a black stripe down each side of its neck. Even as we watched, the bird began a series of extraordinary actions. Hunching its long neck far down between its shoulders, it suddenly thrust it up. As each section straightened, there came to us across the pasture the thudding, bubbling, watery note which we had first heard. It seemed impossible that a bird could make such a volume of sound. At times, after each "bloop," would come the sharp click of the bill as it rapidly opened and shut. Finally the singer convulsive

ke a chamois from crag to crag. On the second bound I slipped off a tussock and went up to my knees in mud and water. The rest of the way I ploughed along, making a noise at each step like the bittern's note. Half-way to the bush, the mother hawk rose and circled around us, screaming monotonously. For half an hour we searched back and forth wit

SH HAWK

here, directly ahead, in a space fringed by spirea bushes but in plain sight, lay a round nest on the ground-about eight inches across and three inches deep, made of coarse grasses ringed around with rushes. Beneath the nest was a well-packed platform several inches thick. I think that this was a natural pile of rushes pressed down by the bird. There, under the open sky, were five large eggs of a dirty bluish-white, nearly ready to hatch. They were the size of a small hen's egg. The very s

oor, with a n

use in the w

breadth of it

ank miles r

picked up on

I put insi

ather, an ea

forget t

over this long-sought nest, making note

e caught the merest glimpse of a tiny bird with a tip-tilted tail and brown back whose undersides seemed yellowish. It was none other than the rare short-billed marsh wren, next to the smallest of our Eastern birds, o

reets, sweet with the scent of lilacs. Right in front of the town hall we found the first nest of the day. Cunningly hidden in the crotch of a sugar maple, just over the heads of hundreds of unseeing passers-by, a ro

rd. Our first haul was a vesper sparrow's nest with one egg-the bird breaking cover near my end. Later in the day another of our party found a better nest of the same bird in the middle of a field, made and lined with grass and set in a little hollow in the ground. It held three eggs of a bluish white, blotched and clouded with umber a

gave me no clue as to the whereabouts of their nests. I decided, however, that my only chance was to watch these females, knowing that an incubating bird will not leave her eggs for any great length of time. Accordingly, when the next streaked brown bird flew up far ahead of me, I settled down in the long grass with a field-glass and carefully watched her flight. She crossed the meadow and alighted some three hundred yards away. In about fifteen minutes she came back and settled in the grass on a slope some distance from where she had flown out. Almost immediately she flew out again, probably warned by the male on guard. Once more she crossed the meadow, and this time stayed away so long that I nearly fell asleep in the drowsy, scented grass. In the meantime, one by one, t

s not to be distracted by any such tactics, but threw my hat to the exact spot from which, as I judged, the female had started. With this as a centre I pushed back the long grass and began to search the area of a five-foot circle, first looking hurriedly under the hat to make sure that it had not covered the nest. My search was all in vain, although it seemed to me that I examined every square inch of that circle. At last I decided that the sly birds had

r the hole beneath. If this were done, it would seem impossible that they concealed anything, for they would be apparen

where victory by no means always inclines to the human. As I looked down at the nest, I knew just how the talented recluse in "The

-note. "See-lick, see-lick, see-lick," it sounded, and we recognized the unfamiliar notes of that rare little black-striped sparrow, the Henslow. The last time we four had heard that note together was

wk's nest. On the way back the Artist made a discovery. Waist-deep among the sedges, with the tiny marsh wrens chipping and bub

he Architect, who lingered behind the rest of us, regarding the nest with much suspicion. Suddenly he noted a movement in the grass, and as he watched, a tawny little meadow mouse climbed up the grass-stems and popped into the hole in the side, to find out wha

y, "that a well-behaved meadow mouse may

decisively; and we started a

, three of which the clumsy foot of the Artist had broken. They were of a chocolate color and, curiously enough, almost identical in color and size with those of the American bittern, except that the inside of the shell of the broken eggs was a light blue. The nest itself was nearly eight inches across and about three inches deep, made entirely of grass. Hurriedly clearing away the broken eggs, we called the Architect from the far side of the marsh. He hastened up, took one look at the nest, a

Wood-Turtle is fond of bird's eggs, I strongly suspect that my capture of him was all that saved the lives of a round dozen of prospective pheasants. We had a leisurely lunch near one of the coldest bubbling springs in the world, seated on a high, dry ridge under the shade of a vast black-walnut tree. After lunch we crossed quaking,

e brown leaf-bed the four vivid blue eggs gleamed out of the green grass like turquoises set in malachite. The eggs of a catbird are of a deeper blue, and those of a hermit thrush of a purer tone, but of all the blue eggs, of robin, woo

's nest still unfound. As we approached the village, we saw showing over the meadows the edge of a continuation of the marsh, and decided that we had time for just one more exploring trip. Her

We reached the woods without finding anything and came back together. When we were within two hundred yards of where the other two were luxuriously waiting for us in the shade, from under my very feet flapped a monstrous bird nearly three feet high. It was the bittern. I was so close that I could see the yellow bill, and the glossy black on the sides of the neck and tips of the wings, and the different shades of brown on back, head, and wings. As it sprang up, it gave a h

a list of fifty-one birds seen and heard, and