48 MATESHIP WITH BIRDS 



bird, is now taking more or less kindly to bush 

 trees), but Wagtail and Whistler are not at all 

 averse to nesting in other situations of moderate 

 convenience. I have even known the familiar little 

 black-and-white bird to build at a height of fifty 

 feet on a slender tree-limb in a back yard. Fre- 

 quently the pretty nest is situated on a branch over- 

 hanging water; but there is no spot which har- 

 monises so well with the soft grey of the nest (or 

 vice versa) as the shady limb of an apple-tree. 



"The Wagtail's nest is beautiful," ran a childish 

 essay: "with the eggs in it is more beautiful; with 

 the fond mother sitting on the nest it is most beau- 

 tiful." Superlative exhausted, what would that 

 child have said of the picture presented by a Wag- 

 tail at home amid the apple-tree's wealth of October 

 blossoms? 



It were easy to enumerate several other species 

 of birds which are more or less constant to the 

 bush-orchard for nesting quarters, but none of these 

 is so much a part of October as the two travelling 

 species of Wood-Swallows, and the spruce study in 

 black-and-white known by the cumbersome title of 

 White-shouldered Caterpillar-eater. Of the three 

 common varieties of Wood-Swallow, the dusky spe- 

 cies (Artamus sordidus) is constant to the south 

 the whole year through. This is the philosophic 

 brown bird which is chiefly notable for the com- 

 munistic tendencies it develops in the Autumn, 

 when as many as fifty of the "tribe" may sometimes 

 be seen clinging together in the fork of a rough- 

 barked tree, in a manner vividly suggestive of a 

 cluster of bees at swarming time. 



