The Hanging Home in the Oak Tree 



By HARRIET WILLIAMS MYERS. Los Angeles, Cal. 



With a photograph by the author 



o 



N the morning of February 19, 1908, I 

 heard the sharp call of the California 

 Bush-tit in my yard, and, hurrying to 

 the door, was in time to see one of these tiny 

 birds flying from a tree, his mouth full of cottony- 

 looking material. It was as I had supposed,^ 

 housekeeping time had begun for the Tit family, 

 as it already had for many another of the feathered 

 tribe. 



In the same block with my home grew a mag- 

 nificent live-oak tree. Hither the little Bush-tit 

 bore his cottony mouthful, and hither, also, I 

 went, -anxious to see just where in the big tree 

 the long pendent nest which these midgets build 

 was being hung. 



I found the birds, for there were two of them 

 in the tree, carrying lining material into a nest 

 which seemed almost completed. It swung — 

 some ten inches long — on a branch about fifteen 

 feet from the ground, that hung almost over the 

 sidewalk, where any one so desiring might easily 

 see it. And yet, I doubt if any one, save those 

 I told about it, ever saw the nest; so well did it 

 blend with the gray bark of the twigs to which 

 it was fastened. 



Only the year before, I had watched the raising 



BUSH-TITS' NEST q£ g^ brood of Tits in this same tree; and I felt sure, 



as I watched this nest, that it was the selfsame one of the year before, and that 



the birds were only re-lining it. Such a stupendous task as it proved to be, and 



how the little midgets did work! 



The birds themselves are about four inches long, having chubby gray-browii 

 bodies, with long tails of the same hue, and being so much alike that it is almost 

 impossible to tell them apart. 



The morning on which I first found the birds at work I was unable to stay 

 long at the tree; but two days later, in three-quarters of an hour spent at the nest, 

 they made twenty-six trips to it, the shortest interval being one-half minute; 

 the longest, six minutes. Both of them w^orked. Just which did the most it 

 was hard to say; often one followed immediately after the other, thus enabling 

 me to come to the conclusion that the work was very equally divided. 



(209) 



