134 BIRDS'-NESTS. 



arrange the material she had brought, using her breast 

 as a model. 



The other nest I discovered in a dense forest on 

 the side of a mountain. The sitting bird was dis- 

 turbed as I passed beneath her. The whirring of her 

 wings arrested my attention, when, after a short pause, 

 I had the good luck to see, through an opening in 

 the leaves, the bird return to her nest, which ap- 

 peared like a mere wart or excrescence on a small 

 branch. The humming-bird, unlike all others, does 

 not alight upon the nest, but flies into it. She enters 

 it as quick as a flash but as light as any feather. Two 

 eggs are the complement. They are perfectly white, 

 and so frail that only a woman's fingers may touch 

 them. Incubation lasts about ten days. In a week 

 the young have flown. 



The only nest like the humming-bird's, and com- 

 parable to it in neatness and symmetry, is that of the 

 blue-gray gnatcatcher. This is often saddled upon the 

 limb in the same manner, though it is generally more 

 or less pendent ; it is deep and soft, composed mostly 

 of some vegetable down covered all over with delicata 

 tree-lichens, and, except that it is much larger, aj)* 

 pears almost identical with the nest of the humming- 

 bird, 



But the nest of nests, the ideal nest, after we have 

 left the deep woods, is unquestionably that of the Bal- 

 timore oriole. It is the only perfectly pensile nes* 

 we have. The nest of the orchard oriole is iudee<i 

 joainly so, but this bird generally builds lower an<? 

 shallower, more after the manner of the vireos. 



