A BIRD IN THE HAND. 



EVERY boy or girl who knows the winter woods 

 has seen, hanging from the forked twigs of bushes 

 or low trees, shallow, cup-shaped nests like that in the 

 picture. 



These woodland nests are generally built by the 

 Red-eyed Vireo, a bird whose enticing song and 

 gentle manners soon win affection, if one learns to 

 know him. The nest in the picture, however, is that 

 of his cousin, the Yellow-throated Vireo, whose dis- 

 position is even more confiding than the Red-eye's. 



I have always liked Yellow-throated Vireos, because 

 of the careless, confident way in which the male sings 

 on the nest; and when a pair of these vireos appeared 

 last May in an apple tree just outside my dining-room 

 window, I was prepared to give them a very cordial 

 welcome. I had no idea, however, w^hen the female 

 finally selected a twig and fell to weaving, how impor- 

 tant a member of our household she would become, 

 and what charming associations she was destined to 

 weave about the tree. 



It was the seventeenth of May when she began the 

 nest. By night it seemed to me finished, but to her 

 trained eye it was still insecure. AH the next morn- 



