ar me, her bill leveled straight at my face. Finally she
alighted on the nest, and, after considerable further delay, as if to
assure herself that everything was quite safe, fed the two chicks from
her throat, as before. "She thrust her bill into their mouths so far" (I
quote my notes) "that the tips of their short little beaks were up
against the root of her mandibles!"

Only once more, on the 4th of July, I ventured into the apple-tree. For
more than an hour and a half I waited. Times without number the mother
came buzzing into the tree, made the circuit of her favorite perches,
dressed her plumage, darted away again, and again returned, till I was
almost driven to get down, for her relief. At last she fed the
nestlings, who by this time must have been all but starved, as indeed
they seemed to be. "The tips of their bills _do_ come clean up to the
base of the mother's mandibles." So I wrote in my journal; for it is the
first duty of a naturalist to verify his own observations.

On the 10th we again brought out the ladder. Though at least eleven days
old, the tiny birds--the "widow's mites," as my facetious neighbor
called them--were still far from filling the cup. While I stood over it,
one of them uttered some pathetic little cries that really went to my
heart. His bill, perceptibly longer than on the 5th, was sticking just
above the border of the nest. I touched it at the tip, but he did not
stir. Craning my neck, I could see his open eye. Poor, helpless things!
Yet within three months they would be flying to Central America, or some
more distant clime. How little they knew what was before them! As little
as I know what is before me.

The violence of the feeding act was now at its height, I think, but it
would be impossible to do justice to it by any description. My neighbor,
who one day stood beside me looking on, was moved to loud laughter. When
the two beaks were tightly joined, and while the old bird's was being
gradually withdrawn, they were shaken convulsively,--by the mother's
attempts to disgorge, and perhaps by the young fellow's efforts to
hasten the operation. It was plain that he let go with reluctance, as a
boy sucks the very tip of the spoon to get the last drop of jam; but, as
will be mentioned in the course of the narrative, his behavior improved
greatly in this respect as he grew older.

On the 12th, just after the little ones had been fed, one of them got
his wings for the first time above the w