278 LAND-BIRDS AND GAME-BIRDS 
year after year. Audubon even proved in one case that the 
young returned with their parents, thus increasing the little 
colony which already existed on his plantation. _ No bird is 
more peaceable or less jealous than the Pewee, who looks hos- 
pitably upon all his neighbors, and it is common to find several 
pairs on the same estate, living in happiness and peace. 
As I sit down to write out of doors, I find that my attention 
is but little confined to my biographical labors. I have placed 
in the shrubbery around the piazza several bits of cotton-wool, 
which readily attract the attention of the various birds who 
are now building. A male Redstart is singing in the oak on 
the bank, while his mate cautiously approaches a vine, from 
which my chair is scarcely a yard distant, and, seizing several 
shreds of the wool, flies off. Eager to discover her home, just 
as I have already discovered those of nearly all her friends 
(and mine too), I step on the lawn to watch her motions. She 
flies to the nearest group of trees and disappears, while I fix 
my eyes upon the cotton-wool, to watch her return; but, when 
some sound causes me to turn my head, I see her pulling at an- 
other piece, in the opposite direction. «How cautious she is of 
betraying her purpose, and what a vacillating course she takes 
from tree to tree! Is she not evidently an unusually cautious 
bird? A neighbor, one of her own species, without waiting for 
warmer weather, has already finished a nest, and laid eggs, ina 
birch on the edge of the swamp, and a “ Black-throated Green,” 
who built in the piazza-vines, last year, showed no hesitation 
in building while persons were near. But here is the Red- 
start again; she is now refreshing herself by catching flies. 
It is after nine o’clock, and she has probably worked for sev- 
eral hours; but she denies herself rest, and again approaches 
the vine, this time to gather several little strips of bark, with 
which she flies directly to the orchard. As she enters a pear- 
tree, pauses a moment, and then flies off, I feel sure that her 
nest is there, and so post myself close to the trunk of a neigh- 
boring apple-tree, motionless and silent, to await her return. 
She immediately reappears, and, apparently not realizing my 
presence, enters her nest, which is already shaped, and firmly 
