3 o Gbe Warbler 



ow all conspire to conceal the pair from their enemies they, most silniy, *„ 

 would seem, do not try to hide themselves. All day long they flit about on 

 tireless wings or run at random over the branches, all the time keeping up 

 their noisy chatter, than which there is no sound of all the orrtdoors more 

 calculated to attract attention to its maker. 



Yet, and this the more strange because the nest is so bulky, the woven 

 home of these birds is one of the hardest for human eyes to locate of any I 

 have ever tried to find. Wherever a pair of the Tits are heard chirping, 

 somewhere thereabouts, you may be sure, there is a nest — but where ? there's 

 the rub ! Made of the gray down from blossoms and from half-dead leaves, 

 the whole bound together with cobwebs of about the same color, it matches 

 so well with the coloring of the under side of the leaves of the oaks or with 

 the trunks of the willows that the moment the eye leaves it, once located, it 

 merges itself into oneness with its surroundings and the whole search has 

 to be gone over again. 



This, too, brings to my mind another interesting point: In oak trees 

 Bush-Tits, one and all, hang their nests well out on the tips of limbs; in 

 willows thev invariably place them close to large limbs or on the main trunk, 

 where some little branching stub gave them a hold for their hanging home. 

 At first the reason for this is not apparent, but as the birds which build in 

 the willows and those inhabiting the oaks are one and the same species, I am 

 forced to the conclusion' that it is solely the protective instinct (Mr. John 



B to the contrary, notwithstanding,) that has driven them to it. In 



the oak trees, the nest is more like the under side of the leaves, and the 

 thickest foliage is placed directly on the ends of the limbs which overlap 

 and form a practically rain-proof shelter. Hung next to the trunk of the 

 oak the difference in color would be at once apparent to the most unobserv- 

 ant; hune in the thicket of leaves, it is so well concealed that I do not be- 

 lieve the collector lives who can find one nest in ten in a search of any well, 

 inhabited oak grove. 



In the willows all this is different. Here there are no thick shelters of 

 leaves; the trees rise straight to the heavens, with their greenery strung out 

 over them like the barbs on a regular wire fence. But the trunks and the 

 branches are the identical color of the blossom-down from which the Tits 

 make their homes — and the birds, accordingly, hang their nests -directly 

 alongside some perpendicular trunk, usually larger in size than the nest it- 

 self will be when completed. And anyone who thinks the long, pensile gray 

 bags so situated are easy to find ought to take a " hike " with me some af- 

 ternoon looking for sets of these. 



I remember one of the first nests of these Tits that I ever found: It 

 was hung well out in a huge live oak tree, fully twenty feet from the ground, 

 amid a tangle of very small limbs. As usual, the birds led me to it after I 

 had watched them for half an hour or more, being first attracted by their 



