The Biggest Bird's-Nest and its 

 Maker 



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HE mere question: What bird builds the 

 biggest nest? would be an idle query did 

 it not include various other interesting 

 facts and considerations. One might reasonably 

 argue that the bigger the bird the bigger the 

 nest, and in a general way this is so, an eagle 

 is, of course, obliged to make a more capacious 

 receptacle in which to bestow its eggs and rear 

 its young than is a wren. But in a more par- 

 ticular way the rule does not hold. Birds of 

 similar size vary greatly in the amount of nest- 

 ing materials they gather, and in the accommo- 

 dations generally which they seem to require. 

 Thus, to recur to our house-wren, though it is 

 one of the most diminutive of birds, it heaps up 

 a mass of twigs often three times as large as 

 the neat, compact home of, say, the cedar-bird, 

 whose body is three times bigger. Our western 

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