The Phoebe at Home 



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the first, or close beside it. I once found six 

 nests in a row, touching one another, on a pro- 

 tected ledge of rocks in a lonely part of West 

 Virginia, some of which may have been for sec- 

 ond broods, though most of them, no doubt, 

 were the work of successive seasons. 



But in general the heavy, laboriously built 

 mud and fiber bowl or bracket will be found in 

 the most concealed and well-covered situations, 

 where a very slight open structure would have 

 sufficed for all purposes, as well as in a com- 

 pletely exposed place, and the green coating of 

 moss is maintained there, where it is of no pro- 

 tective service, as carefully as on the wild crags. 

 Moreover, it often happens that in such circum- 

 stances the moss is worse than useless it posi- 

 tively draws attention to the bird's home. A 

 notable instance came under my observation last 

 summer, when I found a beautiful example of 

 the bracket-nest affixed to the white-plastered 

 wall inside a ruined house in Ulster County, 

 N. Y., and this year a new nest surmounted it. 

 Here the green moss was the very opposite of 

 protective it attracted the eye instantly. This 

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