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 a needle. 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 is 

 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- 

 ly do, the nest, though formed of the same materi- 



