I 12 



Wild Birds. 



y 





Figs. 106, 107. Male Redwing Blackbird cleaning nest on two 

 distinct visits ; photographed under similar conditions, and illus- 

 trating the formation of habit in the daily routine. 



regularity. They would fly to the 

 main branch, hop along toward the 

 fork in which the nest was suspended, 

 and finally perch on a small con- 

 venient twig just over their young. 

 Out of sixty recorded visits they de- 

 viated from this habitual method but 

 three times, and then only before 

 they had recovered from their first 

 feelings of fear. In this case the nest- 

 ing branch had been drawn down 

 about a foot by means of a cord, but 

 was not otherwise disturbed. 



In cleaning the nest the attitude 

 is frequently the same in successive 

 visits, the birds often clasping the 

 same twigs, so that a number of pho- 

 tographs of the act taken without 

 moving the camera may be so nearly 

 identical that only the most careful 

 inspection will reveal the least differ- 

 ence in pose or position. 



While engaged in studying some 

 Redwing Blackbirds last July the 

 weather was hot, and the young had 

 to be brooded almost constantly. 

 The female would sit on the nest, 

 often with back to the tent, with 

 feathers erect and mouth open in her 

 efforts to keep cool. Suddenly the 

 shriek of a steam whistle sounded the 

 hour of noon at a mill scarcely three 

 rods away. It startled me, but the 

 bird did not budge a feather. It is 

 not difficult to imagine that her first 

 experience with this instrument of 

 torture was quite different in its re- 

 sult, but the case illustrates the ease 

 with which birds become quickly ac- 

 customed to strange and uncouth 

 sounds, when, as sometimes happens, 

 they place their nests in a saw-mill 

 a few feet from the buzzing saw or 

 above the grinding trolley cars of a 

 city street. 



