UNDER THE MAPLES 



they have decided on the site, the mother bird 

 brings her first string or vegetable fiber and attaches 

 it to a twig by winding it around and around many 

 times, leaving one or both ends hanging free. I have 

 nests where these foundation strings are wound 

 around a twig a dozen times. In her blind windings 

 and tuckings and loopings the bird occasionally ties 

 a substantial knot, but it is never the result of a. 

 deliberate purpose as some observers contend, but 

 purely a matter of chance. When she uses only 

 wild vegetable fibers, she fastens it to the twig by 

 a hopeless kind of tangle. It is about the craziest 

 kind of knitting imaginable. After the builder has 

 fastened many lines to opposite twigs, their ends 

 hanging free, she proceeds to span the little gulf 

 by weaving them together. She stands with her 

 claws clasped one to each side, and uses her beak 

 industriously, looping up and fastening the loose 

 ends. I have stood in the road under the nest look- 

 ing straight up till my head swam, trying to make out 

 just how she did it, but all I could see was the bird 

 standing astride the chasm she was trying to bridge, 

 and busy with the hanging strings. Slowly the maze 

 of loose threads takes a sacklike form, the bottom 

 of the nest thickens, till some morning you see the 

 movement of the bird inside it; her beak comes 

 through the sides from within, like a needle or an 

 awl, seizes a loose hair or thread, and jerks it back 

 through the wall and tightens it. It is a regular 



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