ion to us, for
we never had disturbed them, never went to the nest till sure that both
were away, and kept still and quiet in our somewhat distant seat.

About this time they began to show more anxiety in their manner. The
first exhibition was on the fourth day since we knew the young were
hatched (and let me say that I _believe_ they were just out of the shell
the morning that we found the father feeding). On this fourth day the
singer perched near the nest-tree, three or four feet from the ground,
and began a very loud wren "dear-r-r-r! dear-r-r-r! dear-r-r-r!"
constantly repeated. He jerked himself about with great apparent
excitement, looking always on the ground as if he saw an enemy there. We
thought it might be a cat we had seen prowling about, but on examination
no cat was there. Gradually his tone grew lower and lower, and he calmed
down so far as a wren can calm, though he did not cease his cries. I did
not know he could be still so long, but I learned more about wren
possibilities in that line somewhat later.

During this performance his mate came with food in her beak, and
evidently saw nothing alarming, for she went to the nest with it. Still
he stood gazing on the ground. Sometimes he flew down and returned at
once, then began moving off, a little at a time, still crying, exactly
as though he were following some one who went slowly. The call, when
low, was very sweet and tender; very mournful too, and we got much
wrought up over it, wishing--as bird students so often do--that we could
do something to help. He was roused at last by the intrusion of a bird
into his domain, and his discomfiture of this foe seemed to dispel his
unhappy state of mind, for he at once broke out in joyous song, to our
great relief. That was not the last exhibition of the wren's
idiosyncrasy; he repeated it day after day, and finally he went so far
as to interpolate low "dear-r-r's" into his sweetest songs. Perhaps that
was his conception of his duty as protector to the family; if so, he was
certainly faithful in doing it. It was ludicrously like the attitude of
some people under similar circumstances.

While the young father was manifesting his anxiety in this way, the
mother showed hers in another; she took to watching, hardly leaving the
place at all. When she had her babies well fed for the moment, she went
up the trunk a little, in a loitering way that I had never seen her
indulge in before,--and a loitering wren is a curios