spider-webs. There was no attempt at
concealment except in the neutral tints, which made it look like a
natural growth of the dim, gray woods.

Continuing my random walk, I next paused in a low part of the woods,
where the larger trees began to give place to a thick second growth
that covered an old Bark-peeling. I was standing by a large maple,
when a small bird darted quickly away from it, as if it might have
come out of a hole near its base. As the bird paused a few yards from
me, and began to chirp uneasily, my curiosity was at once excited.
When I saw it was the female mourning ground warbler, and remembered
that the nest of this bird had not yet been seen by any
naturalist,--that not even Dr. Brewer had ever seen the eggs,--I felt
that here was something worth looking for. So I carefully began the
search, exploring inch by inch the ground, the base and roots of the
tree, and the various shrubby growths about it, till, finding nothing,
and fearing I might really put my foot in it, I bethought me to
withdraw to a distance and after some delay return again, and, thus
forewarned, note the exact point from which the bird flew. This I did,
and, returning, had little difficulty in discovering the nest. It was
placed but a few feet from the maple-tree, in a bunch of ferns, and
about six inches from the ground. It was quite a massive nest,
composed entirely of the stalks and leaves of dry grass, with an inner
lining of fine, dark-brown roots. The eggs, three in number, were of
light flesh color, uniformly specked with fine brown specks. The
cavity of the nest was so deep that the back of sitting bird sank
below the edge.

In the top of a tall tree, a short distance farther on, I saw the nest
of the red-tailed hawk,--a large mass of twigs and dry sticks. The
young had flown, but still lingered in the vicinity, and, as I
approached, the mother bird flew about over me, squealing in a very
angry, savage manner. Tufts of the hair and other indigestible
material of the common meadow mouse lay around on the ground beneath
the nest.

[Illustration: NEST OF RED-EYED VIREO.]

As I was about leaving the woods, my hat almost brushed the nest of
the red-eyed vireo, which hung basket-like on the end of a low,
drooping branch of the beech. I should never have seen it had the bird
kept her place. It contained three eggs of the bird's own, and one of
the cow-bunting. The strange egg was only just perceptibly larger than
the others, y