368 INSECTIVOROUS BIRDS. 



novel situation fell over, but was carried with the young 

 to a safe situation near the piazza of the house, where the 

 parents now fed and reared their brood. In an apple- 

 tree, in another garden, a nest of this bird was made 

 chiefly, to the lining, of loose white cotton strings, which 

 had been used for training up some raspberry bushes, 

 and looked as white and conspicuous as a snow-ball. 

 Sometimes they condescend to the familiarity of picking 

 up the sweepings of the seamstress ; such as thread, 

 yarn, sewing-silk, fine shreds of cotton stockings, and 

 bits of lace and calico ; and it is not uncommon to ob- 

 serve hasty disputes between our little architects and 

 the Baltimore birds, as they sometimes seize and tug up- 

 on the loose or flowing ends and strings of the unfinished 

 nest, to the great annoyance of tlie legitimate operators. 

 The labor of forming the nest seems often wholly to de- 

 volve on the female. On the 10th of May, I observed one 

 of these industrious matrons busily engaged with her 

 fabric in a low barberry bush, and by the evening of the 

 second day, the whole was completed to the- lining, 

 which was made, at length, of hair and willow down, of 

 which she collected and carried mouthfuls so large that 

 she often appeared almost like a mass of flying cotton, and 

 far exceeded in industry her active neighbour, the Balti- 

 more, who was also engaged in collecting the same ma- 

 terials. Notwithstanding this industry, the completion 

 of the nest, with this and other small birds, is sometimes 

 strangely protracted or not immediately required. Yet, 

 occasionally, I have found the eggs of this species im- 

 providently laid on the ground. They are usually about 4 

 or 5, of a dull white, thickly sprinkled near the great 

 end with various sized specks of pale brown. It is amus- 

 ing to observe the sagacity of this little bird in disposing 

 of the eggs of the vagrant and parasitic Cow Troopial. 



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