IV 



THE TRAGEDIES OF THE NESTS 



rriHE life of the birds, especially of our migratory 

 -^- song-birds, is a series of adventures and of hair- 

 breadth escapes by flood and field. Very few of 

 them probably die a natural death, or even live out 

 half their appointed days. The home instinct is 

 strong in birds, as it is in most creatures; and I 

 am convinced that every spring a large number of 

 those which have survived the Southern campaign 

 return to their old haunts to breed. A Connecticut 

 farmer took me out under his porch one April day, 

 and showed me a phoebe-bird's nest six stories high. 

 The same bird had no doubt returned year after 

 year; and as there was room for only one nest upon 

 her favorite shelf, she had each season reared a new 

 superstructure upon the old as a foundation. I 

 have heard of a white robin — an albino — that 

 nested several years in succession in the suburbs of 

 a Maryland city. A sparrow with a very marked 

 peculiarity of song I have heard several seasons 

 in my own locality. But the birds do not all live 

 to return to their old haunts: the bobolinks and 

 starlings run a gauntlet of fire from the Hudson to 

 the Savannah, and the robins and meadowlarks and 



