THE TRAGEDIES OF THE NESTS. 



THE life of the birds, especially of our migratory 

 song-birds, is a series of adventures and of hair- 

 breadth escapes by flood and field. Very few of 

 them probably die a natural death, or even live out 

 half their appointed days. The home instinct is 

 strong in birds as it is in most creatures ; and I am 

 convinced that every spring a large number of those 

 which have survived the Southern campaign return to 

 their old haunts to breed. A Connecticut farmer 

 took me out under his porch, one April day, and 

 showed me a phoebe bird's nest six stories high. The 

 same bird had no doubt returned year after year; 

 and as there was room for only one nest upon her 

 favorite shelf, she had each season reared a new 

 superstructure upon the old as a foundation. I have 

 heard of a white robin an albino that nested 

 several years in succession in the suburbs of a Mary- 

 land city. A sparrow with a very marked peculiar- 

 ity of song I have heard several seasons in my own 

 locality. But the birds do not all live to return to 

 their old haunts : the bobolinks and starlings run a 

 gauntlet of fire from the Hudson to the Savannah, 

 and the robins and meadow-larks and other song- 

 birds are shot by boys and pot-hunters in great num- 



