Il8 NESTS AND EGOS OF niUDS. 



Variations in tlie architecture are described by Nuttall in con- 

 junction with a very remarkable feature of the domestic history of 

 this species — a metliod of outwitting the cow-bird, which he was 

 the first to discover. A second quotation, from his rare Manual, 

 is therefore of value : 



Circumstances sometimes require a variation from the usual habits of the 

 species. In a garden in Roxbury, in the vicinity of Boston, I saw a nest built 

 in a currant-bush, in a small garden very near to the house ; and, as the branch 

 did not present the proper site of security, a large floor of dried grass and 

 weeds, was first made between it and a contiguous board fence ; in the midst 

 of this mass of extraneous materials, the small nest was excavated, then lined 

 with a considerable quantity of white horse-hair, and finished with an interior 

 bed of soft cow-hair. The season proving wet and stormy, the nest in this 

 novel situation fell over, but was carried with the young to a safe situation 

 near the piazza of the house, where the parents now fed and reared their brood 



Sometimes they condescend to the familiarity of picking up the 



sweepings of the seamstress, such as thread, yarn, sewing-silk, fine shreds of 

 cotton stockings, and bits of lace and calico; and it is not uncommon to 

 observe hasty disputes between our little architects and the Baltimore birds, 

 as they sometimes seize and tug upon the loose or flowing ends and strings of 

 the unfinished nest, to the great annoyance of the legitimate operator. 



The labor of forming the nest seems often wholly to devolve upon the 

 female. On the loth of May I observed one of these industrious matrons 

 busily engaged with her fabric in a low barberry bush, and by the evening of 

 the second day, the whole was completed to the lining, which was made, at 

 length, of hair and willow down, of which she collected and carried mouth- 

 fuls so large that she often appeared almost like a mass of flying cotton, and 

 far exceeded in industry her active neighbor, the Baltimore, who was also 

 engaged in collecting the same materials. Notwithstanding this industry, the 

 completion of the nest, with this and other small birds, is sometimes strangely 

 protracted or not immediately required. Yet, occasionally, I have found the 

 eggs of this species improvidently laid on the ground 



The Summer Yellow-Bird, to attract attention from its nest, when sitting, or 

 when the nest contains young, sometimes feigns lameness, hanging its tail and 

 head, and fluttering feebly along, in the path of the spectator; at other times, 

 when certain that the intrusion had proved harmless, the bird would only go 

 off a few feet, utter a feeble complaint, or remain wholly silent, and almost 

 instantly resume her seat. 



A well-known trait of this bird, during the breeding season, is 

 its pertinacious refusal to rear foundlings left at its door by the cow- 



