FASTIDIOUS NESTING HABITS OF A FEW BIRDS. it 
It may be readily noted in the familiar house 
wren, which fills every cavity about the place with 
sticks before it selects one for the real nest. Various 
theories have been advanced to account for this tend- 
ency in our nearest feathered neighbor, all of which 
are partly plausible, but none of which account for all 
the facts. It appears to be a matter of pure selfish- 
ness, as held by Burroughs and others, as if he did 
not want any other bird to enjoy these cavities—a 
sort of dog-in-the manger spirit; but his cousins the 
marsh wrens and the tule wrens of California, and 
others which do not use holes, build a number of 
these sham nests in the grass, sometimes quite near 
each other, only one of which is said ever to be used. 
The writer was sure one year that the extra holes 
were held for the second (or even third) broods, since 
the birds used one of them thus that season, but the 
next year they occupied for the second nest a cavity 
that they had not filled at the beginning of the season. 
This may, however, still seem the reason generally, 
and the minds of these individual birds may have been 
changed ; but the fact of the tule and marsh wrens 
never so using their extra nests, if true, is against this 
view. 
In England these extra nests are called “cock 
nests,” because it is asserted that the male roosts in 
them while his mate is sitting, and the first brood of 
young occupy them at night while the second are 
being hatched. But the writer has found both the 
male and subsequent broods “roosting out” in the 
crotch of a maple while the mother incubated. 
