CEEAP TER XVII. 
WHY DO THE BIRDS BUILD So ? 
Ir we walk out and study the architecture and 
building habits of our feathered neighbors we find 
that they seem to drop into much the same natural 
divisions as our human associates. Some are still 
clinging to the traditions of their fathers and some 
are wide-awake and abreast of the times, and all are 
more or less influenced by circumstances either past 
or present. 
Here, now, we shall find those “ feather-bed folks ”’ 
—the nuthatches, titmice, chickadees, and others— 
sweltering in hot weather at the bottom of deep holes 
on mattresses of fur and down, all because, no doubt, 
their ancestors, as they came down to us on the edge 
of the ice waves, needed these winter linings. Now the 
bird going on has carried them to the Gulf. So the 
blue jay here in June must have a bit of wool to stop 
the chinks in his log-cabin home, and the shrike or 
butcher bird is still barbarous enough to line his wig- 
wam with the coverings of his quarry. 
Then there are the tanagers, the grosbeaks, the 
cardinals, the cuckoos and others, which, by their 
greater development under the tropics and their dis- 
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