BIRDS AND FLOWERS OF EARLY SUMMER 



285 



Connecticut. Upon taking it home, I experienced no 

 trouble in getting it to drink water from a teaspoon, the 

 former having been well sweeftened with sugar. When 

 being fed it would sit on one of my fingers, while I held 

 the spoon with the other hand. At night it slept on the 

 chandelier in the middle of the room, and the first thing 

 in the morning it would fly down to a little glass vessel 

 containing sweetened water which I had taught it to find. 

 Later in the day it would fly out of an open window 

 to visit the flowers of the red honeysuckle that grew 

 luxuriantly over the broad porchway of our home. On 

 one occasion, with a loud and rapid twittering, it flew into 

 the room through the open window closely followed by 

 a fine male bird of its own species my captive being of 

 the opposite sex ; but it was not long after that when my 

 pet responded to the "call of the wild" and flew away 

 never to return. 



Some of our Vireos build very beautiful and compact 

 nests, more or less overlaid with material obtained by 

 the builders from various plants and trees. A fairly good 

 hand at this is our White-eyed Vireo, an example of 

 which is given in Figure 5. I came across this nest in a 

 hedge-way separating two fields, not far beyond the im- 

 mediate environs of Washington. I simply tipped it down 

 a bit, so as to show better the four little lovely eggs it 

 contained, w'hile my camera did the rest. Of course thr 

 owners of the nest were both present, and protested 

 strongly against everything that I did, flipping, in their 

 anxiety, from bush to bush close to their treasured home. 

 I obtained all I needed in less than ten minutes' time. 



whereupon I took my departure. The vireos were evi- 

 dently much relieved, and apparently labored under the 

 impression that their scolding had frightened me ofi" 

 particularly as I had not disturbed the nest or stolen the 

 eggs it contained. 



Even the old-fashioned, rough-and-ready nest that our 

 Song-sparrow builds has a charm for us, as in the first 

 place it usually fills in our minds what constitutes a bird's 

 nest ; while, on the other hand, its builder, the first thing 

 in the spring and all through early summer treats us to 

 its most winning canto of rippling notes as it sits perched 

 on some woodpile- or rail- fence post down in the meadow. 



Personally I have never taken the eggs from any bird's 

 nest for a scientific or other purpose without experiencing 

 a sense of having committed something bordering upon 

 an unworthy act; and I shall never forget the intensely 

 disagreeable sensation that took possession of me upon 

 one occasion, when visiting a friend, and the latter's son 

 came into the room holding his cap in his hands, in which 

 were to be seen at least fifty eggs of the catbird, which 

 he had collected in the neighborhood. I did not hesitate 

 to express my opinion upon what such a wholesale rob- 

 bery meant to the birds, and the loss it occasioned among 

 the songsters of the future not to mention the value 

 of the species along certain economic lines. 



That ventriloquist of the woodland brakes, our Yellow- 

 breasted Chat, is another bird that constructs a rough- 

 and-ready nest, such as is here shown in Figure 7. Once 

 I came across one of these that had been built among the 

 smaller twigs of a dogwood, not far above the ground. It 



NESTS OF HUMMING-BIRDS 



F'g- 4. Humming-birds, so far as known, lay but two white, ellipsoidal eggs to the clutch, while no two species build their nests 

 exactly alike. More than 500 species nave been described, and some of them build truly wondertui homes. 



