The
nest, I should have said, was about four feet from the ground, and
perhaps twenty feet from the cottage. Four days later, I found her
sitting upon it. She flew off as I came up, and I pushed into the scrub
far enough to thrust my hand into the nest, which, to my disappointment,
was empty. In fact, it was still far from completed; for on the 3d of
March, when I paid it a farewell visit, its owner was still at work
lining it with fine grass. At that time it was a comfortable-looking and
really elaborate structure. Both the birds came to look at me as I stood
on the piazza. They perched together on the top of a stake so narrow
that there was scarcely room for their feet; and as they stood thus,
side by side, one of them struck its beak several times against the beak
of the other, as if in play. I wished them joy of their expected
progeny, and was the more ready to believe they would have it for this
little display of sportive sentimentality.
It was a distinguished company that frequented that row of narrow back
yards on the edge of the sand-hills. As a new-comer, I found the jays
(sometimes there were ten under my eye at once) the most entertaining
members of it, but if I had been a dweller there for the summer, I
should perhaps have altered my opinion; for the group contained four of
the finest of Floridian songsters,--the mocking-bird, the brown
thrasher, the cardinal grosbeak, and the Carolina wren.
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