256 FRANCIS H. HERRICK 



washed down every hard rain; and yet these birds drudge on 

 to no purpose from summer to summer, without changing their 

 aspect or house. It is a piteous sight to see them labouring 

 when half their nest is washed away, and bringing dirt * to 

 patch the ruins of a fallen race.' " 



The American robin, to cite another instance, has been found 

 nesting in the drooping slender branches of the weeping willow, 

 and in an osage orange bush/' where the mother was found 

 impaled on one of its thorns. Such instances are wholly excep- 

 tional, but it cannot be confidently asserted that they are always 

 the result of youth or inexperience. 



It appears to be equally futile to attribute the act of occa- 

 sionally nesting on the ground on the part of any species which 

 habitually goes higher to the needs of protection as the result 

 of experience ; all such nests are very unsafe, and birds like 

 the song sparrow which frequently indulge in the practise, 

 are apt to lose their broods when the sitter is not wiped out 

 in the bargain. About the only way I can be sure to preserve 

 such nests when found, is to fence the whole with a fine wire 

 screen. To conclude, the golden eagle which is limited to no 

 narrow range, and can take care of itself under most circum- 

 stances, commonly selects a lofty tree where its huge nest stands 

 .out like a castle on a hill, or a rocky hill top or precipitous cliff 

 n the mountains or by the sea, but on occasion, when possibly 

 induced by the greater accessibility of food, it has been known 

 to rear its home in far humbler surroundings, on the treeless plain. 



Size of the nest. The size and weight of individual nests are 

 subject to greatest variation in those of the statant type, a fact 

 dependent mainly upon the nature of the site and immediate 

 support. Thus when other conditions are approximately uni- 

 form we should expect to find robins' nests, built upon fiat 

 shelves and protected from the weather, to vary far less in these 

 respects than when placed in crotches or upon inclined branches 

 of trees. The bluebird and house wren which commonly adapt 

 natural and often contracted cavities to their needs, usually 

 carry in little building material, and this is molded to form a 

 scant lining, but w^hen coming to a box or bird house they will 

 fill the whole space before modelling an inner nest wall at the 

 farther end for immediate use. Under such conditions the 



" Dawson and Jones. The Birds of Ohio. Cokimbus, 1903, vol. i, p. 224. 



