A SHORT STORY OF BIRDS'-NESTS. 485 



and the character of its nest. In the first place, as the male bird is 

 much brighter in the color of its plumage, would it not require a con- 

 cealing nest if it assisted in incubation ? Now, does the male bird 

 assist in covering the eggs? It unquestionably does. 



Secondly, if the bird-concealing nest, a " pendulous and nearly 

 cylindrical pouch," as described by Dr. Brewer, is constructed solely 

 with reference to the protection of the parent-birds, would it not be 

 within the range of probabilities that, the danger no longer existing, 

 the labor of constructing so elaborate a nest would be abandoned. 

 Has this actually occurred? During the summer of 1872, 1 found nine 

 nests of the Baltimore oriole within a comparatively small area ; in 

 1873, 1 succeeded in finding seventeen nests in an area nearly ten 

 times in extent; and during the present summer (1874) I found thir- 

 teen nests in an area of the same extent as that examined in 1873. 

 These thirty-nine nests I classified as follows : Of the nine nests of 

 1872 that I examined, six were so constructed as to effectually conceal 

 the sitting bird, and three were sufficiently open at the top to give a 

 hawk, hovering above it, a view of the bird. 



Of the seventeen nests of the oriole which I found and inspected 

 during the summer of 1873, eleven of them were "bird-concealing " in 

 their shape, and the remaining six like the three I found in 1872, i. e., 

 open at top. 



During the present summer, Baltimore orioles have been unusually 

 abundant, and, of the thirteen nests I found, eight were open at the 

 top, and five were long, pendulous pouches, that wholly hid from view 

 the sitting-birch 



Bearing in mind the supposed reason for building a nest that 

 would conceal the parent birds when occupying it, I noted down the 

 exact location of each of these thirty-nine nests. In every instance 

 those nests that concealed the sitting bird were at a considerable dis- 

 tance from any house, in uncultivated parts, the larger number on an 

 unfrequented island, the others on elm-trees growing on the banks of a 

 lonely creek. In both of these localities, sparrow-hawks {Tinnunculus 

 sparoerius) were frequently seen they are nowhere so numerous as 

 some seventy years ago as compared with the neighborhoods select- 

 ed for the building of the open-topped nests, all of which were in wil- 

 low and elm trees in the yards of farm-houses, and in full view of the 

 psople continually passing to and fro beneath them. The conclusion 

 drawn from the study of these nests was, that the orioles, knowing 

 there was much less (if not total) absence of danger from hawks, there- 

 fore constructed a less elaborate nest one which answ T ers every pur- 

 pose of incubation, and yet does not conceal them when occupying it. 



Of the nests that did conceal the sitting bird, every one was really 

 open at the top, and the bird entered from above. The weight of the. 

 bird, when in the nest, appeared to draw the edges of the rim to- 

 gether sufficiently to shut out all view of the occupant. The rims of 



