122 THE NESTS OF DIFFERENT BIRDS. 



of their first erection, and with the same precautions 

 against severe weather, when all necessity for such 

 provision has ceased, and the usual temperature of the 

 season rather requiring coolness and a free circulation 

 of air. The house-sparrow will commonly build four 

 or five times in the year, and in a variety of situations, 

 under the warm eaves of our houses and our sheds, the 

 branch of the clustered fir, or the thick tall hedge that 

 bounds our garden, &c. ; in all which places, and with- 

 out the least consideration of site or season, it will col- 

 lect a great mass of straws and hay, and gather a pro- 

 fusion of feathers from the poultry-yard to line its nest. 

 This cradle for its young, whether under our tiles in 

 March or in July, when the parent bird is panting in 

 the common heat of the atmosphere, has the same pro- 

 vision made to afford warmth to the brood ; yet this is 

 a bird that is little affected by any of the extremes of 

 our climate. The wood-pigeon and the jay, though 

 they erect their fabrics on the tall underwood in the 

 open air, will construct them so slightly, and with such 

 a scanty provision of materials, that they seem scarcely 

 adequate to support their broods, and even their eggs 

 may almost be seen through the loosely connected 

 materials : but the goldfinch, that inimitable spinner, 

 the Arachne of the grove, forms its cradle of fine 

 mosses and lichens, collected from the apple or the 

 pear tree, compact as a felt, lining it with the down of 

 thistles besides, till it is as warm as any texture of the 

 kind can be, and it becomes a model for beautiful con- 

 struction. The golden-crested wren, a minute creature, 

 perfectly unmindful of any severity in our winter, and 

 which hatches its young in June, the warmer portion 

 of our year, yet builds its most beautiful nest with the 

 utmost attention to warmth; and, interweaving small 

 branches of moss with the web of the spider, forms a 

 closely compacted texture nearly an inch in thickness, 

 lining it with such a profusion of feathers, that, sinking 

 deep into this downy accumulation, it seems almost lost 

 itself when sitting, and the young, when hatched, ap- 

 pear stifled with the warmth of their bedding and the 

 heat of their apartment; while the whitethroat, the 



