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AMERICAN FORESTRY 



duction. And, why are some birds' eggs pure white and 

 unmarked and others variously and highly colored, with 

 all sorts of marks upon them, from minute dots to 

 scraggly lines? How are these spots and markings pro- 

 duced? Then, too, the nests of birds run all the way 

 from the female laying a single egg on the bare rock on 

 the coast, to those laying ten or more eggs in a very 

 elaborate nest built in very different localities. As a 

 matter of fact, the whole study of birds' eggs is indeed a 

 very large subject. 



With such a wide variation in the eggs of various 

 orders of birds, it is not to be wondered at that we find 

 a similar state of things, or even more marked departures, 



one who has been a close student of avian nestlings may 

 readily distinguish the various kinds, especially should 

 the birds belong to different genera. But to distinguish 

 a week-old nestling of the tree sparrow from a nestling 

 of the Western tree sparrow of the same age the writer 

 questions that any one, however expert, can do it. 



So much for the nestlings of average birds all of 

 which are fed by their parents, and remain in the nest 

 until they are more or less fully feathered, which may 

 require a fortnight or more. Such birds usually possess 

 a plumage quite different from that of their parents, 

 both in coloration and character, in some respects ; more- 

 over, we have reason to believe that the first plumages in 



HUMMING BIRD'S NESTS 



Figure 2. These beautiful nests are of different species of North American humming birds which never lay more than two eggs in their dainty 

 nests. The nests all belong in the splendid collection of Mr. Edward J. Court, of Washington, D. C, loaned the writer for the purposes of photogra- 

 phy; they are natural size, and on the limbs or twigs chosen by their several builders. 



among a large number of young birds. These latter are 

 frequently referred to as "nestlings ;" but in as much as 

 a very large proportion of young birds have never known 

 what a "nest" is, the term can hardly be considered 

 appropriate as applied to all species of this group of 

 vertebrates. What may be considered an average nest, 

 with a pair of nestlings ready to quit it forever, is well 

 shown in the one that our indigo bunting constructs 

 (Fig. 8), which is built in a hemispherical form with 

 coarse grasses, and dead leaves below. Usually it is 

 lined with fine fibers, or more rarely with very fine grass. 

 Many birds, in many countries, build a nest more or 

 less like this one, while, the young of such species possess 

 many characters in common, though not so many but that 



many young birds agree, to some extent, in the matter 

 of coloration, with what the remote ancestral forms of 

 that particular group, or even species, was. For instance, 

 the first plumage of our young robins presents numerous 

 strong speckles on the breast, which indicates that a re- 

 mote ancestor of that species possessed a speckled breast 

 when adult the breast of an adult robin of the present 

 day being plain and unspeckled. In the main, this law 

 holds true for all birds, and the proof of it has long 

 been in the hands of science. 



Another curious fact to be noted is that in the case of 

 some species of birds the plumage of the nestlings is 

 soft, full, downy, and pure white, and this curious fact 

 is well exemplified in the young of many birds of prey, 





