The Phcebe 371 



In BIRD-LORE, some years ago, Mr. John Burroughs recounted an in- 

 cident of a Phoebe that suddenly found herself deprived of the one spot 

 on the ledge of a rock where she had been building her nest for years, 

 and which may have constituted the only place where she had ever had a 

 nest. At this juncture he states: 



"A new stone house had been built upon the rocks above me, with a 

 piazza, all around it, covered by a continuation of the main roof down 

 the required distance. After much inspecting of this piazza the birds 

 concluded to build a nest upon the plate beside one of the rafters. Xow 

 this plate was about thirty feet long and there were ten rafters notched 

 upon it, and hence ten plates exactly alike. The bird selected the fourth 

 rafter from the end nearest the woods, and began her nest upon the 

 plate beside it. She was in a great hurry and worked 'on the jump,' so 

 to speak. She got her mortar in the ditch near my cabin. One morning 

 I watched her for some time. She made a trip every minute, carrying 

 her load up a steep grade about one hundred yards. The male looked 

 on and cheered her, but did not help. He perched upon a dead sunflower- 

 stalk near the ditch, flirted his tail, and said, or seemed to say, 'Go it. 

 Phoebe, you are doing well; you are the wife for me.' Every trip the 

 mother bird made he would accompany her a short distance and then 

 return to his perch. 



"As the nest-building seemed unusually prolonged, I went up one 

 morning to the new house to see how matters were progressing. Instead 

 of one nest I found five in process of construction. Some had only the 

 foundation laid, others were an inch or two high, and one was three- 

 fourths finished. I sat down to see what it all meant. Presently the 

 eager builder came with her beak loaded and dropped down upon one 

 of the nest-foundations. She seemed to hesitate a moment, as if she had 

 a suspicion that something was wrong, and then put down her material 

 and flew quickly away. The next time she struck the nearly finished nest 

 and put down her load without hesitating. I watched her for half an 

 hour and soon saw how it was with her why she scattered so. I con- 

 cluded she was misled by the sameness of the rafters they were all alike, 

 and whichever one she chanced to hit in her hurry, there she deposited 

 her mortar. She had been used to a ledge where there 

 was but one building-site; here there were half a 

 dozen or more, with no perceptible difference be- 

 tween them. So I hit upon a plan to concentrate her I put blocks 

 of wood or stones in all the nests but one and watched the result. 

 When now she came upon these strange obstacles she would hover about 

 for a moment until she discovered the largest and unincumbered nest, 

 when she would alight upon it and leave her load. She then soon took 

 the hint, finished the one nest, laid her eggs, and went forward with the 

 incubation." 



John James Audubon, the great naturalist, tells us in one of his 

 books of the movement of a pair of these birds about their nest. He hid 



