236 FRIENDS WORTH KNOWING. 
a 
off to her nest a piece of lamp-wick ten or twelve feet long. 
This long string and many other shorter ones were left 
hanging out for about a week before both ends were wat- 
tled into the sides of the nest. Some other little birds, 
making use of similar materials, at times twitched these 
flowing ends, and generally brought out the busy Baltimore 
from her occupation in great anger.” 
A lady once told John Burroughs that one of these birds 
snatched a skein of yarn from her window-sill, and made 
off with it to its half-finished nest. But the perverse yarn 
caught fast in the branches, and, in the bird’s efforts to ex- 
tricate it, got hopelessly tangled. She tugged away at it 
all day, but was finally obliged to content herself with a 
few detached portions. The fluttering strings were an eye- 
sore to her ever after, and passing and repassing she would 
give them a spiteful jerk, as much as to say, “ There is that 
confounded yarn that gave me so much trouble!” 
A gentleman in Pennsylvania, observing an oriole begin- 
ning to build, hung ont “skeins of many-colored zephyr 
yarn, which the eager artist readily appropriated. He man- 
aged it so that the bird used nearly equal quantities of vari- 
ous high, bright colors. The nest was made unusually deep 
and capacious, and it may be questioned if such a thing of 
beauty was ever before woven by the cunning of a bird.” 
