How to Attract the Birds 



lutionary scale, the more pains they take to build a 

 practical, beautiful nest, the more attached they 

 become to it, to their mates and helpless young ; so 

 that if there were not a few prominent exceptions 

 among precocial birds one might almost say that 

 domestic virtues and true domestic bliss* are mono- 

 polized by the altricials. However, among the 

 latter it by no means follows that conjugal devotion 

 necessarily extends beyond a single nesting season. 

 Few birds, indeed, seem to enjoy the society of their 

 mates the whole year through ; and we have seen 

 that degenerates, like the cowbird, occur in the 

 most respectable, altricial families. Even the eagle, 

 which mates for life, appears to care less for the 

 partner of his joys and sorrows after the annual 

 brood is carefully reared, than he does for his eyrie, 

 just as his relative, the .osprey or fish hawk, which 

 also remains faithfully wedded to one mate till death 

 parts them, appears to love nothing in the world 

 quite so much as the great bundle of sticks, every 

 year of greater bulk, which they build in some tree 

 top near the shore. Indeed he thinks it no shame 

 to snatch the fish from his wife's talons and eat it 

 himself. To see a pair of loving little downy 

 woodpeckers at work in turn excavating their hollow 

 home, or the mother feeding their young while the 

 father considerately goes in search of food for her 

 when she is too tired to hunt for her own dinner, 

 one might think that here, at least, was devotion 

 enough to last a lifetime ; but when the little wood- 

 peckers have flown and winter nights are long and 

 cold, it is Mr. Downy alone who occupies the 

 sheltered cozy home in the tree trunk, leaving his 



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