The Phoebe at Home 



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mud, or perhaps dissolve it, and so ruin the nest 

 completely. When men came to their locality 

 and began to build houses and sheds and bridges, 

 the phoebes instantly perceived the advantage 

 their roofs and covering afforded, and straight- 

 way began to occupy nesting-sites beneath them. 

 Barns they seem rarely to have entered, perhaps 

 because the pugnacious swallows always drove 

 them away ; but carriage-sheds, isolated and 

 unfrequented buildings, like boat-houses and 

 sugar-camps, were and are quickly seized upon, 

 and in many a rural house to-day a pair of 

 phones is a regular summer accompaniment in 

 some corner beneath the porch-roof. Bridges 

 they are especially fond of, finding in the stone 

 abutments a semblance to their natural cliffs, 

 with an admirable roof in the bridge floor ; but 

 they often choose to put the nest, even there, on 

 the upper surface of a beam or girder, perhaps 

 just beneath the planks of the rattling roadway. 

 So constant and peculiar is this custom that in 

 many parts of the country the bird is known as 

 the " bridge pewee." Abandoned and broken 

 down old houses, especially the stone ones so 



*$ 245 > 



