BIRDS'-NESTS 107 



was destroyed more than a score of times. This 

 jealous little wretch has the wise forethought, when 

 the box in which he builds contains two compart- 

 ments, to fill up one of them, so as to avoid the 

 risk of troublesome neighbors. 



The less skillful builders sometimes depart from 

 their usual habit, and take up with the abandoned 

 nest of some other species. The blue jay now and 

 then lays in an old crow's nest or cuckoo's nest. 

 The crow blackbird, seized with a fit of indolence, 

 drops its eggs in the cavity of a decayed branch. 

 I heard of a cuckoo that dispossessed a robin of its 

 nest; of another that set a blue jay adrift. Large, 

 loose structures, like the nests of the osprey and 

 certain of the herons, have been found with half a 

 dozen nests of the blackbird set in the outer edges, 

 like so many parasites, or, as Audubon says, like 

 the retainers about the rude court of a feudal baron. 



The same birds breeding in a southern climate 

 construct far less elaborate nests than when breed- 

 ing in a northern climate. Certain species of water- 

 fowl, that abandon their eggs to the sand and the 

 sun in the warmer zones, build a nest and sit in 

 the usual way in Labrador. In Georgia, the Balti- 

 more oriole places its nest upon the north side of 

 the tree; in the Middle and Eastern States, it fixes 

 it upon the south or east side, and makes it much 

 thicker and warmer. I have seen one from the 

 South that had some kind of coarse reed or sedge 

 woven into it, giving it an open-work appearance, 

 like a basket. 



