182 BIRDS THROUGH AN OPERA-GLASS. 
They are winning, friendly little things, and 
make pretty nests of fine roots, birch bark, and 
flower cotton, or some such dainty material. Ac- 
cording to individual taste, they build in apple- 
tree crotches, low roadside bushes, or in saplings 
in open woods. In “ Paradise” one once built in 
a loop of grape-vine by the river, and when her 
gray nest was nearly finished she had a pretty 
way of sitting inside and leaning over the edge to 
smooth the outside with her bill and neck, as if 
she were moulding it. The redstarts take good 
eare to select bark the color of the tree, and in 
that way defy any but the keenest scrutiny. A 
little housewife will sometimes fly to her nest 
with strips of bark four inches long streaming 
from her bill. 
The redstart’s song is a fine, hurried warbler 
