I06 SINGING BIRDS. 



tence, the strange egg on which they sat would generally be 

 destroyed. 



When the female is disposed to lay, she appears restless and 

 dejected, and separates from the unregarding flock. Stealing 

 through the woods and thickets, she pries into the bushes and 

 brambles for the nest that suits her, into which she darts in the 

 absence of its owner, and in a few minutes is seen to rise on the 

 wing, cheerful, and relieved from the anxiety that oppressed her, 

 and proceeds back to the flock she had so reluctantly forsaken. 

 If the egg be deposited in the nest alone, it is uniformly 

 forsaken ; but if the nursing parent have any of her own, 

 she immediately begins to sit. The Red-eyed Flycatcher, in 

 whose beautiful basket-like nests I have observed these eggs, 

 proves a very affectionate and assiduous nurse to the uncouth 

 foundling. In one of these I found an egg of each bird, and 

 the hen already sitting. I took her own egg and left the 

 strange one ; she soon returned, and as if sensible of what 

 had happened, looked with steadfast attention, and shifted the 

 egg about, then sat upon it, but soon moved off, again renewed 

 her observation, and it was a considerable time before she 

 seemed willing to take her seat ; but at length I left her on 

 the nest. Two or three days after, I found that she had relin- 

 quished her attention to the strange egg and forsaken the 

 nest. Another of these birds, however, forsook the nest on 

 taking out the Cowbird's egg, although she had still two of her 

 own left. The only example, perhaps, to the contrary of de- 

 serting the nest when solely occupied by the stray egg, is in 

 the Bluebird, who, attached strongly to the breeding-places in 

 which it often continues for several years, has been known to 

 lay, though with apparent reluctance, after the deposition of 

 the Cowbird's egg. My friend Mr. C. Pickering found two 

 nests of the Summer-yellow Bird, in which had been deposited 

 an egg of the Cowbird previously to any of their own ; and 

 unable to eject it, they had buried it in the bottom of the nest 

 and built over it an additional story ! I also saw, in the sum- 

 mer of 1830, a similar circumstance with the same bird, in 

 which the Cowbird's egg, though incarcerated, was still visible 



