Rare and Curious Nests. 273 



in and day out, during its entire summer stay, it pursues the 

 even tenor of its life, happy and contented, never caring, like 

 many of its remoter kin, for the charmed circle of man. 

 Active, energetic and buoyant with hope, it skips about the 

 tall rank herbage, in every direction, in quest of insects, 

 making its presence known and felt by the lively chattering 

 song, which resembles more nearly the sounds of an insect 

 than those of a bird, which emanates from its grassy haunts. 

 As these birds reach their breeding-grounds early in May, 

 nest-building is soon begun, but so secret and mysterious 

 are their movements at first, that we hardly know anything 

 of their presence, except when they are colonized for the 

 summer. The labor of building is entered into with con- 

 siderable alacrity, and is mainly the result of the combined 

 labor of both birds. Their nests are usually placed in low 

 bushes, a few feet above the ground, or woven into the tops 

 of sedges out of the reach of ordinary tides ; but in very 

 rare instances upon the ground in the midst of a clump of 

 grasses. Ground nests are loosely-constructed affairs, which 

 is not the case with those that are elevated to the tops of 

 tussocks, or to the branches of shrubs and trees, which 

 require more compactness and a better finish. The most 

 beautiful, as well as artistic, nest which I have ever seen is 

 the one shown in the cut. This nest was discovered in 

 the vicinity of Philadelphia in the summer of 1878. A 

 willow-branch, some fifteen feet above the ground, which 

 was bifurcated, was made to do service. No ordinary skill 

 was that which surmounted the seemingly insuperable 

 difficulty of building a nest, not pensile in character, to 

 such a swaying branch. That the birds accomplished the 

 feat the nest itself was the evidence. In form this nest 

 was nearly globular, four and a half and five inches in the 

 two diameters. It was woven of the broad leaves of a 

 species of scirpus, closely and evenly, and had its inter- 

 stices well seamed with brownish cottony down. A thin 

 delicate curtain of gauze, of the same material, hung around 



