80 THE ARCHITECTURE OF BIRDS. 
has cleared up these mistakes in a luminous and 
satisfactory manner, by coloured figures of the fe- 
male as well as of the male, in its three different 
gradations of plumage; while the nest is so very 
different in structure, that we have deemed it proper 
to place them in separate chapters. 
“These birds” (the orchard starlings), says Wil- 
son, ‘construct their nests very differently from the 
Baltimores. They are so particularly fond of fre- 
quenting orchards, that scarcely one orchard in sum- 
mer is without them. They usually suspend their 
nest from the twigs of the apple-tree, and often 
from the extremities of the outward branches. It 
is formed exteriorly of a particular species of long, 
tough, and flexible grass, knit or sewed through and 
through in a thousand directions, as if actually done 
with aneedle. An old lady of my acquaintance, to 
whom I was one day showing this curious fabrica- 
tion, after admiring its texture for some time, asked 
me, in a tone between joke and earnest, whether I 
did not think it possible to learn these birds to darn 
stockings. ‘This nest is hemispherical, three inch- 
es deep by four in breadth; the concavity scarcely 
two inches deep by two in diameter. I had the cu- 
riosity to detach one of the fibres or stalks of dried 
grass from the nest, and found it to measure thir- 
teen inches in length, and in that distance was thir- 
ty-four times hooked through and returned, winding 
round and round the nest! The inside is usually 
composed of wool, or the light downy appendages 
attached to the seeds of the platanus occidentalis 
or buttonwood, which form a very soft and commo- 
dious bed. Here and there the outward work is 
extended to an adjoining twig, round which it i 
strongly twisted, to give more stability to the whole, 
and prevent it from being overset by the wind, 
*“ When they choose the long pending branches 
of the weeping-willow to build in, as they frequent- 
by do, the nest, though formed of the same materi- 
