122 Bird-Lore 



The birds built the rim of their nest stout and strong, twisting the 

 web about the twigs and over and over upon itself where it stretched from 

 twig to twig till I wondered at their ingenuity and patience. Their little 

 beaks reminded me of the needle of the sewing machine with its eye at 

 the pointed end. If some Elias Howe of the earlier times had only 

 watched a Weaver-bird with its thread in the tip of its bill the world 

 would not have waited so long for one piece of its useful mechanism. 

 Inside and outside the little heads would reach, with the prettiest turns 

 and curvetings imaginable, till, as the nest grew deeper, the work was 

 done more and more from the inside. Then it was gathered together at 

 the bottom, with side joined to side. When this part of the work first 

 took place the nest seemed to be strangely lacking in depth and had an 

 unshapely look altogether. 



But this was the point where the full revelation came to me of how 

 the deepest part is shaped. I saw the bird at this stage inside the nest 

 raise her wings against the upper rim and the twigs which held it and 

 strain with her wings upward and her feet downward till the nest itself 

 grew so thin that I could see throught it in places. Then they began 

 again, for the most part from the inside, weaving in more material to 

 thicken and strengthen sides and bottom where these had become thin and 

 weak through the stretching. This was done many times over until 

 the proper depth and thickness were both secured. The nest after being 

 stretched out in this way would be like the coarse warp of a fabric on 

 a loom, and into this the little weavers wove their silken threads. 



5. After this came the embellishing with the bits of lichen. These 

 were brought, and fastened on by means of little filmy threads of the 

 spider drawn from the surface of the nest and fastened down over the 

 moss. There was not nearly so much of the lichen used on this nest 

 as on others which I have seen with the glass. It may be that the 

 birds felt a sense of protection from our presence and less need of hiding 

 their home, for they became very tame and quite undisturbed when 

 we stood at the open window. 



6. The brooding time was full of interest to us. So far as we could 

 judge by the birds' actions, there were three eggs. We could not see into 

 the nest. After the sitting proper seemed to have begun it was in about 

 two weeks' time that we saw the first signs of life in the nest. The male 

 bird took his part with the female in the incubating. He would bring 

 food to her as she sat upon the nest and, I am not quite sure, but think 

 that she did the same with him. 



The bird sitting would frequently sing while on the nest. This ques- 

 tion was asked, through the columns of Bird-Lore, about the Yellow- 

 throat by some one from a western state, and here is an answer. I 

 sometimes thought that the deep-toned chirrup was a signal on the part of 



