160 ANIMAL LIFE OF CARLSBAD CAVERN 



and the next day another pair of birds was found 

 occupying a niche in the roof of a cave on the west side 

 of the canyon. 



Even while busily feeding young, the old birds sang 

 with great spirit, sometimes while their mouths were 

 bristling with wings and legs of moths brought in for 

 the young. Wren-like, the parents were bringing food 

 in rapid alternation and evidently supplying large 

 families. May their tribe increase. 



I suspect that some of these wrens remain all winter 

 in and near the warm caves, getting their food from the 

 numerous insects that also take refuge there, or that 

 breed in the twilight of the first rooms. 



A few lead-colored bush-tits, blue-gray and tiny, were 

 found along several of the brushy canyons, and on April 

 10, a beautiful, freshly built nest was found in Garden 

 Canyon, about a mile and a half from the big cave. 

 It was half -hidden in the dense branches of a juniper, on 

 a level with my eyes, hanging like a little sack or long 

 purse, eight or nine inches deep and with a little round 

 hole at one side near the top. It was beautifully woven 

 of soft, woolly plant fibers and spiderwebs, resembling 

 a coarse woolen sock without much heel or toe, and 

 must have been a warm and rather safe cradle for the 

 eggs and young. He would be a heartless collector 

 who would touch or injure one of these beautiful pockets 

 sufficiently to see the eggs at the bottom, or even to 

 learn all the secrets of its structure. The old birds, 

 gray mites as they are, make frantic efforts to drive 

 away intruders either from the nest or from their fam- 

 ilies of young as they are led about in the bushes. 



