Other sweet baby-talk in the trees came from the wood-pewee. The pewee I had noted from the building of her beautiful lichen-covered cradle in the crotch of a wild-cherry tree. The branch, dead and leafless, afforded no screen for the brave little mother. Look when one might, in the hottest sunshine or the heaviest rain, there sat the bird quite up out of the nest, head erect and eyes eagerly watching for intruders. The pewee, for all his tender and melancholy utterances, has a fiery spirit. He hesitates not to clinch with a brother pewee, interpolates his sweetest call into the hot chases, and even when resting between encounters, spreads his tail, flutters his wings, and erects his crest in a most warlike manner. The little dame was not a whit less vigilant than her spouse. Let but a blackbird pass over and she was off in a twinkling, pursuing him, pouncing down upon him savagely, and all the time uttering her plaintive "pe-o-wee!" till her mate joined her, and made it so uncomfortable for the big foe that he departed, protesting to be sure in vigorous black-birdese, but taking good care to go. So persistent were the pewees in these efforts, that in a few days they convinced a pair of blackbirds (purple crow blackbirds) that this part of the grove was no longer a thoroughfare, and whereas they had been quite frequent visitors, they were now rarely seen. The saucy robin who chose to insist upon his right to alight on their tree, as he had always done, was harder to convince; in fact, he never was driven away. Every day, and many times a day, arose the doleful cry of distress. I always looked over from my seat on the other side of the little open spot in the wood, and invariably saw a robin on the lower part of the wild-cherry where the trunk divided, flirting his tail, jerking his wings, and looking very wicked indeed. Down upon him came one, sometimes two pewees. He simply ran up the sloping branch toward their nest, hopped to another limb, every step bringing him nearer, the pewees darting frantically at him--and at last took flight from the other side; but not until he was quite ready. This drama was enacted with clock-like regularity, neither party seeming to tire of its repetition, till the happy day when the pewee baby could fly, and appeared across the grove, near me.