Home Life 



wife to excavate another shelter or shift for herself 

 as best she may. 



"THEN, IF EVER, COME PERFECT DAYS" 



While it is true that manners improve steadily 

 the higher birds ascend in the evolutionary scale; 

 that hen-pecked husbands are treated with more 

 consideration, overworked wives with greater respect 

 and even tenderness until burdens become more 

 evenly shared by both mates, and such refinements 

 as song develop to express the highest emotions of 

 which a bird is capable, nevertheless ideal devotion 

 is short lived, confined as it is to the nesting season. 

 Home life, worthy of the name, occupies but a frac- 

 tion of the birds' year. After the young are reared, 

 nests are usually deserted, and the old birds go off to 

 moult and mope. When new feathers are grown, it 

 is time for most of them to gather in flocks and pre- 

 pare for the autumn migration to warmer climes. 



But in June, home life in all its brief duty is at 

 its height; now is the best time in all the year to 

 really know the birds. And it is never necessary to 

 look far before finding some happy, feathered neigh- 

 bours ; yet if you intrude upon their home life and 

 frighten the parents away, another tragedy of the 

 nest may be added to the long chapter. A young 

 girl from the city who was thoughtless enough to 

 wear a stuffed sea-gull on the front of her hat, stood 

 on the piazza railing of a certain farmhouse to 

 peep in the nest of a phoebe that had built under 

 the eaves. With a piteous cry the startled little 

 mother sprang from her nest, fluttered an instant, 



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