FRIENDS IN FEATHERS 



won't touch these, to make their hatching doubly sure, but we'll 

 make our studies from the others." 



"Well, wouldn't that freeze you?" marvelled Bob, mopping 

 perspiration, "I'm going to do it ! ' 



"Good boy!" I applauded. ''I know you don't very well 

 like the job, but this is our chance for something really rare. 

 The Cow-bird will come back to-morrow, at the same time she 

 did this morning, and select the nest of some deep builder, so if 

 you are on the lookout you are almost sure of seeing her." 



The following morning Bob sent me word that the Cow-bird 

 had imposed an egg on his Yireo; to come quickly if I wanted a 

 study of it. I knew exactly what that meant. Bob uncovered 

 in front of his Vireo nest. The little mother Vireo was so dainty, 

 so delicate, so exquisitely coloured! Her beak was elegantly 

 shaped, her back pale gray, her breast white, her ruby eyes so 

 wise and so trustful, while her confidence in Bob, who passed 

 close by her many times every day, was implicit. 



Of the dozens of nests Bob had located, there was not one 

 so exquisite as this Vireo's, for at the branching of two elm twigs, 

 no higher than my head, she had built a pendent cup lashed to the 

 limbs with bits of string and hair, wound securely round and round 

 and even carried to near-by limbs. When it was solidly tim- 

 bered, securely fastened and softly lined, to Bob and to me, who 

 had watched its, progress, it seemed complete, but the little bird- 

 mother, with exactly the same loving impulse that is in the 

 breast of a human mother when she adds lace and ribbon to 

 her baby's cradle, set about gathering heavy, rough, snow-white 

 cobwebs and festooning them over the outside until the riest ap- 

 peared as if dipped in ocean foam. She stuck through these w^ebs 

 a number of fantastically shaped little dried, brown, empty last- 

 year's seed-pods, as a finishing touch, then Bob took off his hat. 



He said she was a lady so no gentleman would stand 



