6o Bird - Lore 



Try to discover where winter remains the longest and where spring comes 

 the earliest; why Alaska is warmer than Greenland; whether large bodies of 

 water, such as the Great Lakes, tend to hinder or to hasten the advance of 

 spring; why isotherms do not run straight, across the great mountain-ranges; 

 why spring comes earlier on the south side of hills and valleys than on the north; 

 why one side of a tree will sometimes be covered with snow while the other 

 is dripping wet; where the earliest and latest violets (or any other common 

 wild- flowers) bloom in your neighborhood; why trees and shrubs sometimes 

 bud ahead of the season; whether any migrating birds come north while the 

 rivers and ponds are still frozen. 



Begin to make outdoor observations in February, and keep watch of the 

 way nature makes ready to welcome the coming of spring. 



References. 



Hand-book of Nature-Study, Mrs. Anna Botsford Comstock. 



Some New Facts about the Migration of Birds, Wells W. Cooke. (See 

 Yearbook of the U. S. Dept. of Agriculture, 1903.) 



FROM YOUNG OBSERVERS 



The Nest of a Crippled Towhee 



When walking along a pond, one warm summer day, we turned and took 

 a little path into a woods, mostly made up of locust trees and much poison ivy. 

 I looked up into a locust tree and saw a bulky nest. We were puzzled about 

 it, for it did not look like any nest we had ever seen before in such a place. 



We sat down, therefore, and watched the nest. We did not have to wait 

 long, for a male Towhee was seen in the tree. He anxiously chipped. Suddenly 

 a female Towhee came to a near-by bush. At last the male Towhee got up 

 courage and, flying to the nest, fed some very young birds. After feeding 

 his young, which were in a crotch of the locust, surrounded by poison ivy, he 

 flew away. The female bird then got up her courage and fed the young. When 

 the male bird returned, we noticed a singular thing. He had only one legl 



One day when we came to the nest, we found it vacant. 



Then we collected the nest. It was made of the same material as other 

 Towhee nests that we had found on the ground. We thought it quite peculiar 

 to find a Towhee's nest ten feet up in a locust tree in the woods. We reached 

 the conclusion that, because the bird had one leg, it had met with an accident, 

 and probably had built in the tree for safety. — Janet Davenport (aged 13). 

 Cold Spring Harbor, L. I. 



(This nest was on the edge of a thinly- wooded upland pasture, where the Towhee 

 occurs quite commonly. The undersigned observed the female on the nest once, so 

 completely hidden by poison ivy that only her tail and beak showed. Evidently this 

 nest was considerably higher than the one reported in Bird-Lore, Sept.-Oct., 191 1, 



