car. Those ladies did not drive; they were to

car. Those ladies did not drive; they were to be drive wherever they wanted to go.

The berry plants at Muskrat Haven Farm had the thorns bred out of them; their fierce resistance is gone. The North Carolina berries were small and sweet but one paid with a little blood from scratches and pricks from the thorny plants. Some of the sweetness has been bred out of them here in Virginia. Things balance out. With size and thornless brambles went some of the sweetness.

I tried not t6 think about the toxic chemicals that have been sprayed on these plants that were providing me with big, purple-black fruits. As least the Indigo Bunting had survived the poison and was there to provide me with a singing companion.

The North Carolina blackberry picking was accompanied by many bird sounds including the squawks and cackles of a Yellow-breasted Chat. Can those strange sounds be called a song, in the same league with the sweet notes and trills of a Field Sparrow? That little sparrow, along with Indigo Buntings, also sang over that long ago blackberry patch.

I would wander off to find the singers and consider myself happy if I was scolded by a chat. His abrupt, cat-like notes told me I was near a nest. Finding a chat nest was not easy for they build in the center of the most densely prickled patch of blackberries. I persisted, got scratched, and found chat nests. It was a loosely constructed cup, as loose and ill-formed as the song of the bird.

If an Indigo Bunting abruptly ceased his incessant song I knew I was near his eggs or young. It took careful listening to hear the soft, complaining tsip of a brown female. Often I would find the nest, a neat cup of weed stems and grasses containing pure white eggs. If there were young, they would be all bulging, featherless abdomens and big eyes. How could these