AMERICAN ORNITHOLOGY. 245 



a little of the interest, so freely lavished upon some more beautiful, may 

 be tendered a deserving one, though a mere waif of the streets, that I 

 offer this short anecdote. In the back door yard of my home, there stands 

 a large apple tree which a family of cat birds once made their home. 

 While walking about one morning as the tree was just coming into bloom, 

 1 noticed a small bird busily engaged in the old cat bird's nest. Upon in- 

 vestigation I found it to be none other than an English sparrow, but could 

 not just understand what he was about. Presently he darted away with 

 a stick that he had stolen, and flew straight to an old tree where I discov- 

 ered the outlines of his nest. This was of great interest to me and I re- 

 solved to watch him, as domesticus, in this locality at least, rarely builds 

 his nest in trees, choosing rather some nook aboot the house or stable. In 

 a short time he was back, selecting again one of the outside sticks of the 

 nest. Back and forth he went, again and again, until within a very short 

 time the old cat bird's nest had entirely disappeared, and had been trans- 

 formed into the nest of Passer domesticus, in the old tree. 



It may have been that the mere abundance of nesting material in this 

 place caused the little fellow to return from time to time, but the fact that 

 he first took the sticks from the outside and then, as his own nest increas- 

 ed, those of the inner, ending with the soft stuffs that lined the old nest, 

 suggests to me that perhaps even the despised little English sparrow pos- 

 sesses more of that higher instinct, call it "reason" if you will, than we 

 accredit him with. sheridan r. jones. 



A BIRD STRATEGIST. 



So far as is known to any of us boys, there is but one pair of Broad- 

 winged Hawks in Kennebunk, Me.; and these have, for four years, per- 

 sistently nested in the same locality, a wooded valley on the river bank, 

 and for four years they have been robbed. In 1898 I saw one of the birds 

 with about three feet of rope in its talons going to the nest, and in June I 

 found the young about ready to fly. 



The next year they built about half a mile from the old site, and the 

 young birds were taken. In 1900 they used the old nest of the first year. 

 This year the old hawk seemed to know that all the boys were on the 

 watch for her eggs, and that extra precautions would be necessary, so 

 she set her wits to work to outgeneral them. On the 24th of April I was 

 strolling down that way, when I saw in a tall pine, a mass of sticks and 

 moss, looking like a last year's squirrel's nest. After looking at it from 

 all sides, 1 went on thinking it nothing but a bunch of sticks. 1 went to 

 the tree where the nest of '98 had been and found there was a crow's nest 

 in the top, the hawk's nest being empty and unrepaired. 



