230 Bird -Lore 



rotting curbing. Stone piers of country bridges are favorite places and the 

 bird is widely known as "Bridge Pewee." 



Mr. John Burroughs thinks the Phoebe does not show any very great 

 amount of intelligence when it comes to adjusting its mind to new conditions. 

 In Bird-Lore, some years ago, he recounted an incident of a Phoebe that sud- 

 denly found herself deprived of the one spot on the ledge of a rock where she 

 had been building her nest for years, and which may have constituted the only 

 place where she had ever had a nest. At this juncture he states: 



"A new stone house had been built upon the rocks above me, with a piazza 

 all around it, covered by a continuation of the main roof down the required 

 distance. After much inspecting of this piazza the birds concluded to build 

 a nest upon the plate beside one of the rafters. Now this plate was about 

 thirty feet long and there were ten rafters notched upon it, and hence ten 

 plates exactly alike. The bird selected the fourth rafter from the end nearest 

 the woods, and began her nest upon the plate beside it. She was in a great 

 hurry and worked 'on the jump,' so to speak. She got her mortar in the ditch 

 near my cabin. One morning I watched her for some time. She made a trip 

 every minute, carrying her load up a steep grade about one hundred yards. 

 The male looked on and cheered her, but did not help. He perched upon a 

 dead sunflower-stalk near the ditch, flirted his tail, and said, or seemed to say, 

 'Go it, Phoebe, you are doing well; you are the wife for me.' Every trip the 

 mother bird made he would accompany her a short distance and then return 

 to his perch. 



"As the nest-building seemed unusually prolonged, I went up one morning 

 to the new house to see how matters were progressing. Instead of one nest I 

 found five in process of construction. Some had only the foundation laid, 

 others were an inch or two high, and one was three-fourths finished. I sat 

 down to see what it all meant. Presently the eager builder came with her beak 

 loaded and dropped down upon one of the nest-foundations. She seemed to 

 hesitate a moment, as if she had a suspicion that something was wrong, and 

 then put down her material and flew quickly away. The next time she struck 

 the nearly finished nest and put down her load without hesitating. I watched 

 her for half an hour and soon saw how it was with her — why she scattered so. 

 I concluded she was misled by the sameness of the rafters — they were all alike, 

 and whichever one she chanced to hit in her hurry, there she deposited her 

 mortar. She had been used to a ledge where there was but one building-site; 

 here there were half a dozen or more, with no perceptible difference between 

 them. So I hit upon a plan to concentrate her — I put blocks of wood or stones 

 in all the nests but one and watched the result. When now she came upon 

 these strange obstacles she would hover about for a moment until she dis- 

 covered the largest and unincumbered nest, when she would alight upon it 

 and leave her load. She then soon took the hint, finished the one nest, laid her 

 eggs, and went forward with the incubation." 



