A few days later I went bird's-nesting with another friend in the very heart of the city of Camden. Through the manufacturing district a sluggish creek winds its way past factory after factory. There, under a clump of golden-rod leaves, he showed me the nest of a spotted sandpiper, made of reeds lined with grass, containing four eggs--dark-brown eggs, spotted at the larger end with chocolate marks, and coming to a sharp point at the other end. Later on, I found another nest in the middle of a mass of horse-tail. Then, in the very centre of a base-ball diamond, not far from second base, on the naked ground, he showed me a killdeer's nest--a hollow scraped in the gravel, with four eggs which so matched the stones that they had escaped the notice of the players all around them. On the bank of the creek we found song sparrows' nests, and out in a patch of marsh, on the very last tussock, the dried-grass nest of a swamp sparrow, which was much thicker than the song sparrow's, while the four eggs were of a marbled warm brown and white. Then we pushed on, still in the city limits, until we came to an old quarry-bed half-filled with water, which had turned into a noisome bit of marshland. Pushing a rickety raft out through the muck and water-reeds of the stagnant water, my friend showed me, on a clump of pickerel weed on a sunken stick, a nest of twigs on which was sitting a strange bird. Its long sharp beak pointed straight skyward. Its back was a combination of shades of soft reddish-browns, while its breast was reddish-brown streaked with white. The most curious things about it were its eyes. They were almost all pupil, with a bright golden ring around the extreme edge, and stared at us unwinkingly like a great snake. Although we came close up, the bird absolutely refused to leave her nest, and stabbed viciously at a stick which I poked out toward her. Finally, not daring to trust my hand within reach of that stabbing yellow beak, I lifted her up bodily with the long stick, enough to show five whitish-blue eggs rounded at each end. It was the rare nest and eggs of the least bittern, a bird a little over a foot long, which has a strange habit of clutching with its claws the stalks of reeds and walking up them like a monkey. As we left, amid the clicking notes of the cricket-frogs and the boom of the bull-frogs we heard a very low "Cluck, cluck, cluck." It was the least bittern singing the only song she knew, in celebration of the fact that she still had her eggs safe. [Illustration: MRS. KILDEER AT HER NEST]