12 INTRODUCTION. 



patches of lichen, gives her nest the appearance of a moss-grown 

 Icnot. A similar artifice is employed by our Yellow Breasted Fly- 

 catcher or Vireo, and others. The Golden-Crowned Thrush (Sylvia 

 aurocapilla) makes a nest like an oven, erecting an arch over it, so 

 perfectly resembling the tussuck in which it is concealed, that it is 

 only discoverable by the emotion of the female when startled from 

 its covert. 



The Butcher-bird is said to draw around him his feathered 

 victims by treacherously imitating their notes. The Kingfisher of 

 Europe is believed to allure his prey by displaying the brilliancy 

 of his colors, as he sits near some sequestered place on the margin 

 of a rivulet ; th^ fish, attracted by the splendor of his fluttering and 

 expanded wings, are detained, while the wily fisher takes an un- 

 erring aim.* The Erne, and our Bald Eagle, gain a great part of 

 their subsistence by watching the success of the Fish-Hawk, and 

 robbing him of his finny prey as soon as it is caught. In the same 

 way also the rapacious Burgomaster or Glaucus Gull (Larus glaucus) 

 of the North, levies his tribute of food from all the smaller species 

 of his race, who knowing his strength and ferocity, are seldom in- 

 clined to dispute his piratical claims. Several species of Cuckoo, 

 and the Cow-Troopial of America, habitually deposit their eggs in 

 the nests of other small birds, to whose deceived aftection are com- 

 mitted the preservation and rearing of the parasitic and vagrant 

 brood. The instinctive arts of birds are numerous ; but treachery, 

 like that which obtains in these parasitic species, is among the 

 rarest expedients of nature in the feathered tribes ; though not un- 

 common among some insect families. 



The art displayed by birds in the construction of their temporary 

 habitations, or nests, is also deserving of passing attention. Among 

 the Gallinaceous tribe, including our land domestic species, as well 

 as the aquatic and wading kinds, scarcely any attempt at a nest is 

 made. The birds which swarm along tlie sea-coast, often deposit 

 their eggs on the bare ground, sand, or slight depressions in shelving 

 rocks J governed alone by grosser wants, their mutual attachment is 

 feeble or nugatory, and neither art nor instinct prompts attention to 

 the construction of a nest, the less necessary, indeed, as the young 

 take to the water as soon as hatched, and early release themselves 

 from parental dependence. The habits of the other aquatic birds 



* The bright feathers of this bird enter often successfully, with olliers, into the 

 composition of the most attractive artificial flies employed by anglers. 



