>From the first nest I noted, which was that of a bluebird,--built
(very imprudently I thought at the time) in a squirrel-hole in a
decayed apple-tree, about the last of April, and which came to naught,
even the mother-bird, I suspect, perishing by a violent death,--to the
last, which was that of a snow-bird, observed in August, among the
Catskills, deftly concealed in a mossy bank by the side of a road that
skirted a wood, where the tall thimble blackberries grew in abundance,
from which the last young one was taken, when it was about half grown,
by some nocturnal walker or daylight prowler, some untoward fate seemed
hovering about them. It was a season of calamities, of violent deaths,
of pillage and massacre, among our feathered neighbors. For the first
time I noticed that the orioles were not safe in their strong, pendent
nests. Three broods were started in the apple-trees, only a few yards
from the house, where, for previous seasons, the birds had nested
without molestation; but this time the young were all destroyed when
about half grown.
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