ice joke upon us all. At any rate this performer
was not suffering as his tones would indicate; for seeing that he had an
audience more interested than he desired, he pulled himself together,
whisked his bushy tail in our faces, and disappeared behind the trunk,
from whence, in one instant, his head was thrust on one side and his
tail on the other. And so he remained as long as we were in sight.

This absurd episode changed our mood, and soon we tramped gayly back
over the soft leaf-covered paths, fording the newly formed brooks,
shaking showers upon ourselves from the saplings, and arriving at last,
dripping but happy, on the veranda, where, after donning drier costumes,
we spent the rest of the day watching the birds that came to the trees
on the lawn.

XIX.

THE VAGARIES OF A WARBLER.

The bird lover who carries a glass but never a gun, who observes but
never shoots, sees many queer things not set down in the books; freaks
and notions and curious fancies on the part of the feathered folk, which
reveal an individuality of character as marked in a three-inch warbler
as in a six-foot man. Some of the idiosyncrasies of our "little
brothers" may be understood and explained from the human standpoint,
others are as baffling as "the lady, or the tiger?"

One lovely and lazy day last July--the fourth it was--a perfect day with
not a cannon nor even a cracker to disturb its peace, my comrade and I
turned our steps toward the woods, as we had for the thirty-and-three
mornings preceding that one.

This morning, however, was distinguished by the fact that we had a
special object. In general, our passage through the woods was an
open-eyed (and open-minded) loitering walk, alternated with periods of
rest on our camp-stools, wherever we found anything of interest to
detain us.

On this Fourth of July we were in search of a warbler,--one of the most
tantalizing, maddening pursuits a sensible human being can engage in.
Fancy the difficulty of dragging one's self, not to mention the flying
gown, camp-stool, opera-glass, note-book and other impedimenta through
brush and brier, over logs, under fallen trees, in the swamp and through
the tangle, to follow the eccentric movements of a scrap of a bird the
size of one's finger, who proceeds by wings and not by feet, who goes
over and not through all this growth.

The corner to which we had traced our "black-throated blue," and where
we suspected he had a nest, presented a l