Another pair of blue grossbeaks built in a graveyard within the city limits.  The nest was placed in a low bush, and the male continued to sing at intervals till the young were ready to fly.  The song of this bird is a rapid, intricate warble, like that of the indigo-bird, though stronger and louder.  Indeed, these two birds so much resemble each other in color, form, manner, voice, and general habits that, were it not for the difference in size,—­the grossbeak being nearly as large again as the indigo-bird,—­it would be a hard matter to tell them apart.  The females of both species are clad in the same reddish-brown suits.  So are the young the first season.

Of course in the deep, primitive woods also are nests, but how rarely we find them!  The simple art of the bird consists in choosing common, neutral-tinted material, as moss, dry leaves, twigs, and various odds and ends, and placing the structure on a convenient branch, where it blends in color with its surroundings; but how consummate is this art, and how skilfully is the nest concealed!  We occasionally light upon it, but who, unaided by the movements of the bird, could find it out?  During the present season, I went to the woods nearly every day for a fortnight, without making any discoveries of this kind, till one day, paying them a farewell visit, I chanced to come upon several nests.  A black and white creeping warbler suddenly became much alarmed as I approached a crumbling old stump in a dense part of the forest.  He alighted upon it, chirped sharply, ran up and down its sides, and finally left it with much reluctance.  The nest, which contained three young birds nearly fledged, was placed upon the ground, at the foot of the stump, and in such a position that the color of the young harmonized perfectly with the bits of bark, sticks, etc., lying about.  My eye rested upon them for the second time before I made them out.  They hugged the nest very closely, but as I put down my hand they scampered off with loud cries for help, which caused the parent birds to place themselves almost within my reach.  The nest was merely a little dry grass arranged in a thick bed of dry leaves.

This was amid a thick undergrowth.  Moving on into a passage of large, stately hemlocks, with only here and there a small beech or maple rising up into the perennial twilight, I paused to make out a note which was entirely new to me.  It is still in my ear.  Though unmistakably a bird note, it yet suggested the bleating of a tiny lambkin.  Presently the birds appeared,—­a pair of the solitary vireo.  They came flitting from point to point, alighting only for a moment at a time, the male silent, but the female uttering this strange, tender note.  It was a rendering into some new sylvan dialect of the human sentiment of maidenly love.  It was really pathetic in its sweetness and childlike confidence and joy.  I soon discovered that the pair were building a nest upon a low branch a few yards from