Ho NATURE STUDY. 



Some Birds' Nests. 



BY THEODORA RICHARDSON. 



After each feather}' snow-storm of the past winter daj'S 

 when each twig 



" Wore ermine too dear for an earl," 

 and a deep white coverlid was laid over our cedar-bird's 

 nest on the bough of the garden pear-tree, it brought to 

 mind the nest finds of the past summer days ; and made 

 us think that we are again nearing the happy time when 

 feathered songsters will be with us. Will they build in 

 the old site ? 



All children love to find a bird's nest, and some grown 

 up children experience the same delight. 



When a child, my mother lived in a Massachusetts vil- 

 lage, on a hillside facing Wachusett. Hardly ten feet 

 from the house was a sapling spruce, in which a pair of 

 robins built one spring. The birds we observed at a dis- 

 tance all the spring, and after they had left the nest, at the 

 close of summer, at the suggestion of her mother, the nest 

 was removed. It was the old-fashioned idea that in so 

 doing, the birds would again build in the same spot. 

 With the next spring, came a pair of robins, and nested 

 in the very same crotch of the spruce, which was about 

 four feet up from the ground, at a point where a ten-year- 

 old could snatch surreptitious peeps when the old bird 

 was away. The removal of the nest, and its building oc- 

 curred again and again, for five or six consecutive 5'ears. 



I recently had a talk with a sportsman, who is also a 

 lover of birds, for he guards, " as the apple of his eye," all 

 the tenants of his orchard. He had known that the wood- 

 pewee built somewhere on the north side of his house, and 

 after diligent search located the nest in an apple tree. 

 The succeeding year, when the plaintive note of the little 



