Something of this we felt as we lingered over this long-sought nest, making notes and photographs--our way of collecting. Just at sunset we waded back and stopped at the little arm of the swamp where we had first heard the bittern. Suddenly from the sedges came a scolding little song that sounded like "Chop, chip-chop, chp'p'p'p'," and we caught the merest glimpse of a tiny bird with a tip-tilted tail and brown back whose undersides seemed yellowish. It was none other than the rare short-billed marsh wren, next to the smallest of our Eastern birds, only the hummingbird being tinier. Neither of us had ever seen this marsh wren before, and we tramped back three long miles to town with a new bird, a new nest, and a new note to our credit in our out-of-doors account. That night over a good dinner we were joined by the other two of our Four who for many happy years have hunted together. Just at dawn the next day, we all stole out of the sleeping inn and along the silent village streets, sweet with the scent of lilacs. Right in front of the town hall we found the first nest of the day. Cunningly hidden in the crotch of a sugar maple, just over the heads of hundreds of unseeing passers-by, a robin had brooded day by day over four eggs whose heavenly blue made a jewel-casket of her mud nest. I hope that the brave silent bird raised her babies and sent them out to add to the world's store of music and beauty. Beyond the village we dragged a meadow. A long cord was tied to the ankles of two of us, and each walked away from the other until it was taut and then marched slowly through the fields. The moving line just swished the top of the long grass and flushed any ground birds that might be nesting within the area covered by the fifty-foot cord. Our first haul was a vesper sparrow's nest with one egg--the bird breaking cover near my end. Later in the day another of our party found a better nest of the same bird in the middle of a field, made and lined with grass and set in a little hollow in the ground. It held three eggs of a bluish white, blotched and clouded with umber and lavender at the larger ends. Two of the eggs were marked with black hieroglyphics like those seen in the eggs of an oriole or red-winged blackbird. The vesper is that gray sparrow which shows two white tail-feathers when it flies, and sings an alto song whose first two notes are always in a different key from the rest of the strain.