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

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,

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.

I did disturb them sorely, however, as instantly appeared. The calmness they had shown during all the days we had been looking at the nest was gone, and they began to scold at once. The head of the family berated me from the top of a grass-stem, and then flew to a tall old stump, and put me under the closest surveillance, constantly uttering a queer call like "Chack-que-dle-la," jerking wings and tail, and in every way showing that he considered me intrusive and altogether too much interested in his family affairs. I admitted the charge, I could not deny it; but I did not retire.

At last he apparently determined to insist upon my going, for he started from his high perch directly toward me. Swiftly and with all his force he flew, and about twenty feet from me swooped down so that I thought he would certainly strike my face. I instinctively dodged, and he passed over, so near that the wind from his wings fanned my face. This was a hint I could not refuse to take. I left him, for the time.

That evening when we went for our usual call, lo! the nest was empty. At not more than seven or eight days of age, those precocious infants had started out in the world! That explained the conduct of the anxious papa in the afternoon, and I forgave him on the spot. I understood his fear that I should discover or step on his babies three, scattered and scrambling about under all that depth of grass. The abandoned homestead, which we carefully examined, proved to be merely a cup-shaped hollow in the ground, slightly protected by a thin lining.

In a few days the wandering younglings were up in front of the house, where we could watch the parents drop into the grass with food; and where, of course, they were safe from anybody's intrusion. I had one more encounter with his lordship. After the young had been out a week or more, they seemed in their moving about to get back near to the old place. As I took my usual walk one evening, down the carriage drive to the gate, I found two pairs of bobolinks on one tree; the two mothers with food in their mouths, evidently intended for somebody down in the grass; and the two fathers, very much disturbed at my appearance. They greeted me with severe and reproving "chacks," and finally favored me with the most musical call I have heard from the sweet-voiced bird of the meadow. It was like "kee-lee!" in loud and rich tones, and it was many times repeated.

I assured them that I had no wish to disturb their little ones; though, if I had been able to lift the whole grassy cover to peep at the two small families hidden there, I fear I should have yielded to the temptation.

Our bird had been somewhat erratic in making his home far from his fellows,—so social are these birds even in nesting-time; but now he was joined by more of his kind from the meadows below, and to the beautiful waving carpet of green, dotted here and there with great bunches of black-eyed Susans and devil's paint-brushes (what names!), and sprinkled all over with daisies, now beginning to look a little disheveled and wild, was added the tantalizing interest of dozens of little folk running about under its shelter.

The next week brought to the meadow what must seem from the bobolink point of view almost the end of the world. Men and horses and great rattling machines, armed with sharp knives, which laid low every stem of grass and flower, and let the light of the sun in upon the haunts and the nests of the bobolink babies.

Happily, however, not all the earth is meadow and subject to this annual catastrophe; and I think the whole flock took refuge in a pasture where they were safe from the hay-cutters, and had for neighbors only the cows and the crow babies.