Part 17

THE BOBOLINK'S NEST.

My acquaintance with the bobolink was resumed a year later in the lovely summer home of a friend in the Black River Country, within sight of the Adirondack hills. We had found many nests in the woods and orchards, but the meadow had been safe from our feet, partly because of the rich crops that covered it, but more, perhaps, because of the hopelessness of the search over the broad fields for anything so easily hidden as a ground nest.

One evening, however, our host with a triumphant air invited us to walk, declaring that he could show us a nest more interesting than we had found.

The gentleman was a joker, and his statements were apt to be somewhat embellished by his vivid imagination, so that we accepted them with caution; but now he looked exultant, and we believed him, especially as he took his hat and stick and started off.

Down the road we went, a single carriage-way between two banks of grass a yard high. After carefully taking his bearings by certain small elm-trees, and searching diligently about for an inconspicuous dead twig he had planted as a guide-post, our leader confidently waded into the green depths, parted the stalks in a certain spot, and bade us look.

We did. In a cosy cup, almost under our feet, were cuddled together three bird-babies.

"Bobolinks?" we cried in a breath.

"Yes, bobolinks," said our guide; "and you had to wait for an old half-blind man to find them for you."

We were too much delighted to be annoyed by his teasing; a bobolink's nest we never hoped to see.

Nor should we, but for a discovery of mine that very morning. Walking down that same road, I had noticed in the deep grass near the path a clump of exquisite wild flowers. They were of gorgeous coloring, shaded from deep orange to rich yellow, full petaled like an English daisy, and about the size of that flower, with the edge of every tiny petal cut in fairy-like fringe. I admired them for some minutes as they grew, and then gathered a handful to grace my room. As I came up to the house, my host stood on the steps; his eyes fell at once upon my nosegay, and a look of horror came into his face.

My heart sank. Had I unwittingly picked some of his special treasures, some rare exotic which he had cultivated with care?

"Where did you find that stuff?" he demanded. I was instantly relieved; no man will call a treasure "stuff."

"In the meadow," I answered. "What is it?"

"You must show me the exact spot," he said, emphatically. "I shall have a man out at once, to get it up, root and branch. It's the devil's paintbrush."

"Then his majesty has good taste in color," I said.

"That stuff," he went on, "spreads like wildfire. It'll eat up my meadow in a year."

I turned back and showed him the spot from which my flowers had come, pointing out at the same time two or three other clumps I could see farther out in the waving green sea, and before long his farmer and he were very busy over them.

Now it appeared that in tramping about the deep grass, where we bird-students dared not set our feet, he had nearly stepped on a bobolink, who flew, and thus pointed out her nest; and he had taken its bearings with the intention of putting us to shame.

We looked long at the tiny trio so compactly packed in their cradle, till they awoke and demanded supplies. Then we carefully replanted the dead stick, taking its exact bearings between three trees, drew a few grass-stems together in a braid at the margin so that we should not lose what we had so accidentally gained, and then we left them.

During this inspection of the nest, the "poet of the year" and his spouse were perched on two neighboring trees, utterly unmoved by our movements. They were, no doubt, so perfectly confident of the security of the hiding-place that it never occurred to them even to look to see what we three giants were doing. At least, such we judged were their sentiments by the change in their manners somewhat later, when they thought we were likely to make discoveries.

The meadow itself had been our delight for weeks. When we arrived, in the beginning of June, it was covered with luxuriant clumps of blue violets, and great bunches of blue-eyed grass that one might gather by the handful at one picking. Later the higher parts were thickly sprinkled with white where

"Gracefully as does the fawn, Sweet Marguerites their dainty heads uphold,"

while the hollows were golden with buttercups. Then the grass under the warm June sun stretched up inch by inch till it was three or four feet high and very thick. Meanwhile a bobolink or two, and as many meadow-larks had taken possession of it, and it was made still richer by the sweet minor strains of the lark, and the song of the bird who,

"like the soul Of the sweet season vocal in a bird, Gurgles in ecstasy we know not what."

The evening after our humiliation--which we lost sight of in our joy--we returned to the charmed spot, parted again the sweet grass curtains and gazed down at the baby bobolinks, while the parents perched on two trees as before and paid not the smallest attention to us.

We passed on down the road to the gate where we could look into a neighboring pasture and watch for a pair of red-headed woodpeckers who lived in that pleasant place, and catch the reflection of the sunset in the northern sky. While we lingered there, I looked with my glass back at the bobolinks, and chanced to see Bobby himself in the act of diving into the grass. When he came out he seemed to notice me, and instantly began trying to mislead me.

He came up boldly, flew to another spot where a weed lifted its head above the green, and dropped into the grass exactly as though he was going to the nest; then he rose again, repeated his tactics, pausing every time he came out and calling, as if to say, "This is my home; if you're looking for a nest, here it is!" His air was so business-like that it would naturally deceive one not possessed of our precious secret, the real spot where his three babies were cradled, and one might easily be led all over the meadow by the wily fellow.

For six successive days we paid our short visits, and found the nestlings safe. They did not seem to mature very fast, though they came to look up at us, and open their mouths for food. But on the seventh day there was a change in Master Robert's behavior. On the afternoon of this day, wishing to observe their habits more closely, I found a seat under a tree at some distance, not near enough, as I thought, to disturb them.