284 



THE OOLOGIST. 



pair nested last spring vvitliiu 75 feet of 

 my sitting room window, in plain sight 

 while incubating, and close beside the 

 street where there were constant pass- 

 ers by. I have fonud many of their 

 nests here, and deem them fully as dom- 

 esticated as the Robin, but I think its 

 wits are getting sharpened, and in 

 course of time it will be more like its 

 -eastern relatives. 



Another species, that in my Ijoyhood 

 'days was a great favorite, is the Balti- 

 more Oriole, and many times I looked 

 with longing eyes at its nest, almost in- 

 variably' pendant from the extreme 

 twigs of a drooping branch of some 

 large elm, and about equally distant 

 fi'om the ground anu the body of 

 the tree, but I recall one e.vcepr 

 tiou to this rule. 



An Oriole, it must have been the fam- 

 ily dunce, or an extremely absent 

 minded bird, built its nest attached to 

 some twigs growing from the main 

 trunk of a young apple tree, close to 

 the house, and only six or seven feet 

 from the ground; an easy step into the 

 first crotch of the tree, and all the 

 housekeeping arrangements were right 

 under our eyes. 



A full set of eggs were laid and their 

 very inuocency would have saved them, 

 but in the absence of the family some 

 roaming boys raided the orchard and 

 carried off the eggs. 



In this locality the favorite nesting 

 place of this bird is the twigs near the 

 top of some poplar oi aspen; in many 

 cases apparently easy to reach; br.t no 

 one who knows the brittle natui'e of 

 this wood will rashlj' venture far from 

 the ground, so the}' are rarely molested, 

 and their bird wit it woukl seem, has 

 lead them to take advantage of the fact, 

 as I have never found the nest in an 

 oak or other tough wooiled ti-ee. 



The Golden-winged Woodpecker is a 

 bird that we would naturally suppose 

 to be very conservative in its habits of 

 house builillnu. but T have in niv coi- 



lection a set of their eggs taken from a 

 shallow hole in a sand bank; but in its 

 limited experience it had not mastered 

 the laws of drainage, as have the King- 

 fisher and Bank Swallow, so its tunnel 

 sloped in the wrong direction, and the 

 unfortunate miner was . incubating 

 some hopelessly addled eggs in a pool 

 of slimey mud. 



The story of the Chimney Swallow 

 forsaking its hollow tree for the white 

 man'^ chimney, is a "iwice told tale," 

 but there are some of this species, who 

 are not satistied with this advance- 

 ment, and still aspire to something 

 better. Some years ago, in entering a 

 deserted and entirely unlighted barn 

 in northern New Hampshire, my at- 

 tention was attracted by the twittering 

 of birds and opening the dooi'S I dis- 

 covered a nest of this species attached 

 to the side of the barn near the roof, 

 access to the building being gained 

 through a crevice in the siding; al- 

 though as dark as any chimney, the 

 bu'd doubtless appreciated the ample 

 room and still more the shelter from 

 drenching I'ains and the disastrous re- 

 sults that so often fo.low to the ten- 

 ants of a chimney. 



A day or two after, on visiting a 

 friend about four miles from this barn 

 I was much interested to observe a 

 further advancement in this line. 



His barn, which was constantly in 

 use, being a tj'pical farmer's barn, 

 was much in favor with birds, in the 

 basement a pair of Pewees were occupy- 

 ing the same building site for the third 

 year, upstairs some Barn Swallows 

 were nesting on the lie beams, as they 

 had for years, and against the end ol 

 the barn opposite the big doors, a 

 pairof Chimney Swallows were located 

 for the second year, their new nest l)e- 

 ing built close to the one of the previ- 

 ous year; here the^' nested in the full 

 light of day, passing in and out the 

 door along with the rest of their assoc- 

 iates. Whc 1 the young were large 



