NEST BUILDING o 75 



My husband and I once watched the building of 

 a pair of indigo bluebirds. Attracted by the songs 

 from a bird-ljtpuse in the conservatory, the blue- 

 birds settled in a honeysuckle nearby, where we 

 watched their construction while we worked among 

 the flowers. Both birds carried material, the fe- 

 male building. They used what grass they could 

 find, loose bark of the honeysuckle, and dry leaves 

 beneath it, with the result that their nest was the 

 largest and loosest that I ever saw built by their 

 species. 



The martins carry quantities of dead twigs 

 broken from tree tops, and at the Cabin, south, 

 stripped the top of a pear tree bare of green leaves, 

 but at the height of their box on the windmill, I 

 could not tell whether the work was done by males, 

 females, or both. I was puzzled as to what use 

 they made of all of the green leaves they carried, 

 until I climbed to their location to clean sparrow 

 nests from the house, and found the martin nests 

 in construction as green as fresh leaves would make 

 them. All of the birds flew ceaselessly, and I am 

 sure that all of them work. 



Among birds of the woods, where male and fe- 

 male are very similar in colouring, such as cuckoos, 

 all thrushes, and catbirds, the only way to tell 

 whether the male and female both work is to see 

 both birds at a nest with building material at the 

 same time. This I have seen in the cases of cat- 

 birds, thrushes, and doves, but never cuckoos. 



