CHAPTER II. 



ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE METHOD. 



IT is always interesting to see how birds actually behave when put to the test, and as 

 illustrations of the method applied I have selected four common birds, the Cedar 

 \Vaxwing, the Baltimore Oriole, the Redwing Blackbird, and the Kingbird. The 

 choice might have fallen, however, upon any others in my list, for the principles are in 

 every case the same. 



Since the breeding habits of these birds will be described more fully at a later time, 

 the change of their nesting site and their behavior in the face of new surroundings need 

 only concern us for the present. 



On the third day of July a Cedar-bird's nest (No. 10 of table on page 12) was discovered 

 in an unusually attractivesituation. It was fastened to the horizontal branch of a white pine 

 about fifteen feet up, in the line of an old stone wall that bounded an 

 open field. In passing beneath the tree almost daily during the follow- 

 ing week, I was sure to find one of the old birds, the female as I supposed, always on the 

 nc>t and sitting in the same alert attitude, engaged either in incubation or brooding. 

 \Yith upstretched neck she would sit motionless and silent as a statue, as if listening 

 intently, her dark eye shining like a jet black bead against the background of pine 

 needles. I was waiting for the propitious time to move this nest to the open field. This 

 time arrived on July I4th, when the heads of the young began to appear over the rim 

 of their nest. The bough was then sawn off, carried fifty feet from the tree, and set up 

 in the newly mown field, in an east to west line at a height of four feet from the ground, 

 and in such a way that the birds could be " skyed," and the light would be good from nine 

 o'clock in the morning until three in the afternoon. The tent was then pitched and 

 closed ; the whole operation lasted longer than usual owing to some difficulty in getting 

 stakes of the right height. Fifteen minutes is usually long enough for this work. 



From peep holes the old birds could be seen in the nesting tree, and you began to 

 hear their faint z-e-e-e-e-e-t ', in response to calls from the young. In twenty-four minutes 

 the female was on the bough and fed her brood with red bird cherries by regurgitation. 

 At this point I was obliged to leave the tent and request some curious boys to keep 

 a\\,iy, but the mother bird was back in a moment. In a short time the old birds began 

 to alight on the peak of the tent, which was an observatory for them as well as for the 

 person inside. Taking a look about, they would drop down to the nest only a step away. 

 This was done more than ten times in the course of the day. Observations began at 

 8.40 in the morning and closed at 4.40, so that with an intermission at noon, they lasted 

 nearly seven hours and twenty minutes. During this interval the young were fed with 



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