oor, the mother bird would fly out to him and away
they would go together; for it never seemed to occur to the care-free
lover that he might brood the eggs in her absence.

When the young hatched, however, affairs took a more serious turn.
Mother wren at least was kept busy looking for spiders, and later, when
both were working together, if not hunting among the green treetops, the
pretty little brown birds often flew to the ground and ran about under
the weeds to search for insects. Once when the mother bird had flown up
with her bill full, she suddenly stopped at the twig in front of the
nest, looking down, her tail over her back wren fashion, the sun on her
brown sides, and her bill bristling with spiders' legs.

[Illustration: A Trying Moment.]

On June 7 I noticed a remarkable thing. For more than five weeks, all
through the building and brooding, the little lover had been acting as
if on his honeymoon--as if the nest were a joke and there were nothing
for him to do in the world but sing and make love to his pretty mate--as
if life were all 'a-courtin'.' On this day he first came to the tree
with food, sang out for his spouse, gave her the morsel, and flew off.
Later in the morning he brought food and his mate carried it to the
young. But afterwards, when she started to take a morsel from him,
behold! he--the gay, frivolous little beau, the minstrel lover--actually
acted as if he didn't want to give it up, as if he wanted to feed his
own little birds himself. With wings trembling at his sides he turned
his back on his mate and started to walk down the branch away from her!
But he was too fond of her to even seem to refuse her anything, and so,
coming back, gave her the morsel. She probably divined his thought, and,
let us hope, was glad to have him show an interest in his children at
last; at all events, when he came again with food and clung to the tip
of a drooping twig waiting although she first lit above him and came
down toward him with bill wide open and wings fluttering in the pretty,
helpless, coquettish way female birds often tease to be fed; suddenly,
as if remembering, she flew off, and--he went in to the nest himself! It
was a conquest; the little lover was not altogether lacking in the
paternal instinct after all! I looked at him with new respect.

On June 12 I wrote: "The wrens seem to have settled down to business."
It was delightful to find the small father actually taking turns feeding
the young