THE BUILDING OF THE NEST. 145 



only to be an attempt ; last year's experience 

 was remembered, and strand after strand was 

 deftly picked up while the bird was flying. I am 

 confident now that I am listening, while I write, 

 to the very wren that comforted me last sum- 

 mer. 



While some of our birds content themselves 

 with but shallow depressions in the ground, and 

 many others place together so few sticks (and 

 these ill-arranged) that the nest might readily be 

 overlooked, there is one bird that is too lazy to 

 do even so much, but drops an egg in the nest 

 of another bird. This is the habit, too, of the 

 European cuckoo, but our cuckoos are nest- 

 builders, and the bird to which I have referred 

 belongs to a very different group. Few people 

 seem to know it at all, and yet it is abundant 

 over a wide range of country, and has a dozen 

 names, mostly meaningless. The best, perhaps, 

 of them is " cowpen bird," a name derived, I sup- 

 pose, from the fact that the bird is often found 

 in pastures where there are cattle or sheep. In- 

 deed, I have often seen them standing upon the 

 backs of cows and sheep, catching flies, I pre- 

 sume, though they seem to be quite inactive when 

 upon such a perch. Although not nest-builders, 

 they have something to do with the building of 

 nests. When that tireless songster the red-eyed 

 vireo builds its pensile nest on the hillside, the 



