Consider the following snippet:

<ul id="nav">
    <li>...</li>
</ul>

$('<li><a href="#">Change location</a></li>').prependTo('#nav').find('a').bind('click', function() {
    var close = $('span', this); // same with $(this).find('span');
    console.log( close[0]); // it's the <a> and not a <span> element
    return false;
});

The query $('span', this) returns the parent element if there's no match.