f the frame of the tree. The treetop was a grove in itself. A
flock of blackbirds flying up into it was lost among the branches.

[Illustration: THE BIG SYCAMORE]

The ranchman knew the sycamore as the 'swallow tree,' because in former
years, before the valley was settled, swallows that have since taken to
barns built there. Between three and four hundred of them plastered
their nests on the underside of the big limbs, about half way up the
tree, where the bark was rough. They built so close together that the
nests made a solid mass of mud. For several seasons, it was said, "they
had bad luck." They began building before the rainy season was over, and
all but a few dozen nests which were in especially protected places were
swept away. The number of nests was so enormous that the ground was
covered several inches deep with mud.

Billy used to improve his time by nibbling barley while I watched birds
in the sycamore corridor. We had not been there long before I discovered
a bee's nest in the hollow of one of the trunks. The owners were busily
flying in and out, and a pair of big bee-birds flew down from their nest
in the treetop and saved themselves trouble by lunching at this
convenient ground floor restaurant. As I sat on Billy, facing the nest,
one of the pair swept down over the mouth of the hole, caught a bee and
settled back on the branch to swallow it. This seemed to be the regular
performance, and was kept up so continuously, even when we were
standing close by, that if, as is supposed, the birds eat only drones,
few but workers would be left in that hive.

The flycatchers seemed well suited to the sycamore; they were birds of
large ideas and sweeping flights. Their nest was at the top of the tree;
probably eighty feet from the ground, but when one of them flew down,
instead of coming a branch at a time, he would set his wings and, giving
a loud cry,--as a child shouts when pushing off his sled at the top of a
steep hill,--he would sail obliquely down from the treetop to the foot
of the hillside beyond. When looking for his material he would hover
over the field like a ph[oe]be. Then, on returning, unlike the other
birds who lived in the tree and used the branches as ladders, he would
start from the ground and with labored flights climb obliquely up the
air to the treetop. Once his material dangled a foot behind him. The
birds seemed to enjoy these great flights.

Their nest was not finished, and while one wen