ourse one must not only see sharply, but read aright what he sees.
The facts in the life of Nature that are transpiring about us are like
written words that the observer is to arrange into sentences. Or the
writing is in cipher and he must furnish the key. A female oriole was
one day observed very much preoccupied under a shed where the refuse
from the horse stable was thrown. She hopped about among the barn fowls,
scolding them sharply when they came too near her. The stable, dark
and cavernous, was just beyond. The bird, not finding what she wanted
outside, boldly ventured into the stable, and was presently captured by
the farmer. What did she want? was the query. What, but a horsehair
for her nest which was in an apple-tree near by; and she was so bent on
having one that I have no doubt she would have tweaked one out of the
horse's tail had he been in the stable. Later in the season I examined
her nest and found it sewed through and through with several long horse
hairs, so that the bird persisted in her search till the hair was found.

Little dramas and tragedies and comedies, little characteristic scenes,
are always being enacted in the lives of the birds, if our eyes are
sharp enough to see them. Some clever observer saw this little comedy
played among some English sparrows and wrote an account of it in his
newspaper; it is too good not to be true: A male bird brought to his
box a large, fine goose feather, which is a great find for a sparrow
and much coveted. After he had deposited his prize and chattered his
gratulations over it he went away in quest of his mate. His next-door
neighbor, a female bird, seeing her chance, quickly slipped in and
seized the feather,--and here the wit of the bird came out, for instead
of carrying it into her own box she flew with it to a near tree and
hid it in a fork of the branches, then went home, and when her neighbor
returned with his mate was innocently employed about her own affairs.
The proud male, finding his feather gone, came out of his box in a high
state of excitement, and, with wrath in his manner and accusation on
his tongue, rushed into the cot of the female. Not finding his goods and
chattels there as he had expected, he stormed around a while, abusing
everybody in general and his neighbor in particular, and then went away
as if to repair the loss. As soon as he was out of sight, the shrewd
thief went and brought the feather home and lined her own domicile with
it.