Let it be said at the outset that the seeker after bird's-nests is never without plenty of company, of one sort and another. For instance, I was out early one cloudy morning last spring, when I caught sight of a handsome black and white animal nosing his way through the bushes on one side of the path. He had come forth on the same errand as myself; and I thought at once of the veery's nest, for which I had been looking in vain, but which could not be far from the very spot where my black and white rival was just at this moment standing. I wondered whether he had already found it; but I did not stay to ask him. In spite of his beauty, and in spite of our evident community of interest, I felt no drawings toward a more intimate acquaintance. I knew him by name and reputation,--_Mephitis mephitica_ the scientific folk call him, with felicitous reverberative emphasis,--and that sufficed. At another time, a few weeks later than this, I overheard an unusual commotion among the birds in our apple orchard. "Some rascally cat!" I thought; and, picking up a stone, I hastened to put a stop to his depredations. But there was no cat in sight; and it was not till I stood immediately under the tree that I discovered the marauder to be a snake, just then slowly making toward the ground, with a young bird in his jaws. Watching my opportunity, while he was engaged in the delicate operation of lowering himself from one branch to another, I shook the trunk vigorously, and down he tumbled at my feet. Once and again I set my heel upon him; but the tall grass was in his favor, and he succeeded in getting off, leaving his dead victim behind him.[71:1] It is noble society in which we find ourselves, is it not? In the front rank are what we may call the _professional_ oölogists,--such as follow the business for a livelihood: snakes, skunks, weasels, squirrels, cats, crows, jays, cuckoos, and the like. Then come the not inconsiderable number of persons who, for a more or less strictly scientific purpose, take here and there a nest with its contents; while these are followed by hordes of school-boys, whom the prevalent mania for "collecting" drives to scrape together miscellaneous lots of eggs,--half-named, misnamed, and nameless,--to put with previous accumulations of postage-stamps, autographs, business cards, and other like precious rubbish. Alas, the poor birds! These "perils of robbers" and "perils among false brethren" are bad enough, but they have many others to encounter; "journeyings often" and "perils of waters" being among the worst. Gentle and innocent as they seem, it speaks well for their cunning and endurance that they escape utter extermination.