142 



IN SPRING. 



great event of the coming summer nest-build- 

 ing. 



While not quite true that all worth knowing 

 of a bird is centered in the few weeks occupied 

 in rearing its young, certainly at no other time is 

 it seen to the same advantage. Every faculty is 

 quickened then, and all that a bird is capable of 

 effecting is apparent. Something more impor- 

 tant than food-getting commands its attention, 

 and reason is exercised almost if not quite to the 

 exclusion of instinct, for the nest of every bird 

 must meet its builder's peculiar needs, and is riot 

 fashioned blindly after the homes of its ances- 

 tors. It is true that a family likeness runs 

 through the nests of a given species of bird, but 

 to say of a deserted one in autumn this or that 

 bird built it is a rash procedure. 



Not every bird builds a nest, although all lay 

 eggs, and, as has been intimated, all nests are not 

 alike. Perhaps the cup-shaped structure built of 

 twigs and lined with fine grass may be said to be 

 the typical form, but many are the modifications 

 of this simple pattern. And now this beautiful 

 May morning the birds are building. Not here 

 and there a sparrow or a thrush, but birds of 

 many kinds, and building everywhere. I can 

 not even mention them by name, or my article 

 would run into a catalogue. Suffice it to say 

 they are building in the barn and on it, in my 



