. I saw him feed his mate only once or twice, and noticed much
less of the quivering wings, though after leaving the nest he would
sometimes light on a branch and move them tremulously at his sides for a
moment. June 15 I wrote: "The birds are feeding rapidly to-day. I hear
very little song from the male; probably he has all he can attend to.
I'd like to know how many young ones there are in that hole." At all
events, the voices of the young were getting stronger and more
insistent, and it is no bagatelle to keep half a dozen gaping mouths
full of spiders, as any mother bird can tell. This particular mother
wren, however, seemed to enjoy her cares. She often called to the young
from a branch in front of the nest before going in, and stopped to call
back to them with a motherly-sounding _krup-up-up_ as she stood in the
entrance on leaving.

One day as one of the old birds stood in the doorway its mate flew into
the nest right over its head. The astonished doorkeeper was so startled
that it took to its wings.

Before this, in watching the wrens, I had looked off across a sunny
field of golden oats, against the background of blue hills. On June 14,
when I went to the nest, the mowers had been at work around the
sycamores and the oat-field was full of cocks. Just as the wren was most
anxious for peace and quietness, for a safe world into which to launch
her brood, up came this rout of haymakers with all their clattering
machines, laying low the meadows to her very door.

No wonder the little bird met me with nerves on edge. When the eggs had
first hatched, she had objected to me, but mildly. To be sure, once when
she found me staring she flew away over my head, scolding as much as to
say, "Stop looking at my little birds," and finding me there when she
came back, shook her wings at her sides and scolded hard, though her
bill was full; but still her disapproval did not trouble me; it was too
sociable. But now, for some time, affected by the shadow of coming
events, she had been growing more and more fidgety under my gaze,
darting inside, then whisking back to the door to look at me, in again
to her brood and out to me, over and over like a flash--or, like a poor
little troubled mother wren, distracted lest her unruly youngsters
should pop out of the hole in the tree trunk when I was below to catch
them.

On this day, when the wren came up from the dark nest pocket and found
me below, she called back to her little ones in