green-tails are quite wary about divulging their domestic secrets, and
for a time I was almost in despair of finding even one of their nests.
In vain I explored with exhausting toil many a steep mountain side,
examining every bush and beating every copse within a radius of many
rods.

My purpose was to flush the female from her nest, a plan that succeeds
with many birds; but in this instance I was disappointed. It is possible
that, when an intruder appears in their nesting haunts, the males,
which are ever on the lookout, call their spouses from the nests, and
then "snap their fingers," so to speak, at the puzzled searcher.

However, by watching the mother birds carrying worms in their bills I
succeeded in finding two nests. The first was at Breckenridge, and,
curiously enough, in a vacant lot at the border of the town, not on a
steep slope, but on a level spot near the bank of Blue River. The mother
bird had slyly crept to her nest while I watched, and remained firmly
seated until I bent directly over her, when she fluttered away, trailing
a few feet to draw my attention to herself. It was a cosey nest site--in
a low, thick bush, beneath a rusty but well-preserved piece of
sheet-iron which made a slant roof over the cradle. It contained three
callow bantlings, which innocently opened their carmine-lined mouths
when I stirred the leaves above them. It seemed to be an odd location
for the nest of a bird that had always appeared so wild and shy. The
altitude of the place is nine thousand five hundred and twenty feet.

My second green-tail's nest was in South Platte Canyon, near a station
called Chaseville, its elevation being about eight thousand five hundred
feet. I was walking along the dusty wagon road winding about the base of
the mountain, when a little bird with a worm in her bill flitted up the
steep bank a short distance and disappeared among the bushes. The tidbit
in her bill gave me a clew to the situation; so I scrambled up the steep
place, and presently espied a nest in a bush, about a foot and a half
from the ground. As had been anticipated, it turned out to be a
green-tailed towhee's domicile, as was proved by the presence and uneasy
chirping of a pair of those birds. While the nest at Breckenridge was
set on the ground, this one was placed on the twigs of thick bushes,
showing that these birds, like their eastern relatives, are fond of
diversity in selecting nesting places.

This nest contained four ba