BIRDS'-NESTS. 143 



The less skilful builders sometimes depart 

 from their usual habit, and take up with the 

 abandoned nest of some other species. The 

 blue- jay now and then lays in an old crow's- 

 nest or cuckoo's-nest. The crow-blackbird, 

 seized with a fit of indolence, drops its eggs 

 in the cavity of a decayed branch. I heard 

 of a cuckoo that dispossessed a robin of its 

 nest ; of another that set a blue-jay adrift. 

 Large, loose structures, like the nests of the 

 osprey and certain of the herons, have been 

 found with half a dozen nests of the black- 

 bird set in the outer edges, like so many par- 

 asites, or, as Audubon says, like the retain- 

 ers about the rude court of a feudal baron. 



The same birds breeding in a southern 

 climate construct far less elaborate nests 

 than when breeding in a northern climate. 

 Certain species of water-fowl that abandon 

 their eggs to the sand and the sun in the 

 warmer zones, build a nest and sit in the 

 usual way in Labrador. In Georgia, the 

 Baltimore oriole places its nest upon the 

 north side of the tree ; in the Middle and 

 Eastern States, it fixes it upon the south or 

 east side, and makes it much thicker and 

 warmer. I have seen one from the South 

 that had some kind of coarse reed or sedge 



