THE HOMES OF BIRDS. 



Birds' nests are not merely bunches of 

 twigs or grass ; they are neat structures 

 carefully put together. 



The yellow warbler makes her nest of 

 fine grass and plant-down and lines it 

 with a silky vegetable fibre, and it is very 

 soft On the other hand, the rude plat- 

 forms of twigs, of the yellow-billed cuc- 

 koo and crow are comparatively rickety 

 affairs. 



Almost everyone has seen a field spar- 

 row's nest. It is coarse looking from 

 the outside, but as soft inside as that of 

 the yellow warblers. 



Meadow larks' nests are hard to find 

 because of their concealment in the grass. 

 My first sight of a meadow lark's nest 

 was as the female flew a short distance 

 in the air, and then fell back to earth 

 again as if wounded. The nest was in a 

 tuft of long, dry grass at the base of a 

 sycamore tree, and it held five eggs. Four 

 of these afterward hatched. 



The goldfinch's nest is built on the 

 same principle as that of the yellow- 

 warbler, of plant-down, grass and vege- 

 table fibre lined with thistle-down ; it is 

 placed from five to twenty feet from the 

 ground. 



The chestnut-sided warbler's is also a 

 neat nest. It is composed of grass and 

 a small amount of plant fibre and is lined 

 with erass and hair. This nest is usual- 

 ly placed in a fork of three branches, 

 about eight or nine feet above the 

 ground. , 



The red-eyed vireo or preacher bird 

 suspends her cradle on the tipmost end of 

 the branch and hangs it in a fork. 

 It is made of cedar bark, weed bark and 

 sometimes birch bark, and is neatly lined 

 with coarse grass. 



The nest of the chimney swift is not 

 soft, but very neatly shaped, the twigs 

 being glued together with a slime which 



the bird produces. Into this bracket four 

 or five creamy white eggs are laid and, 

 while sitting on the eggs, the female if 

 disturbed, will slowly raise her wings and 

 flutter a few feet down the chimney; if 

 again disturbed, she will repeat the ac- 

 tion. 



Everybody is familiar with the hair- 

 lined nest of the chippy, which is placed 

 in trees, bushes or grapevines. I have 

 two in my collection which show the 

 preference for color which birds possess, 

 one being lined with pure white horse- 

 hair and the other with black. I have 

 sometimes seen nests lined with brown. 



A pair of flickers nested quite near to 

 my home one year and by rapping at 

 the bottom of the tree-stump, first the 

 male would appear, give a cautious 

 glance around and then fly heavily away 

 followed by his mate. The nest of this 

 bird is like that of all the woodpeckers, a 

 hole drilled in the tree, slightly larger 

 at the bottom and lined with powdered 

 wood. The stump where these flickers 

 lived was riddled with other woodpeck- 

 ers' holes, which were inhabited by 

 English sparrows. This accounted for 

 the disappearance of the flickers some 

 time later. 



I missed them sadly, but soon was in- 

 terested in a yellow-billed cuckoo which 

 built in a thicket somewhat near the 

 flickers' tree. The young cuckoo which 

 hatched died when it was five days old. 

 The parent either deserted it or was 

 killed. I was very sorry for its death 

 for I wished to watch it develop to ma- 

 turity. 



If people who are so fortunate as to 

 have chippies nest in the vines, or phoebes 

 under the eaves, will protect the nests, 

 by watching and feeding the birds, they 

 will soon make some faithful little 

 friends. 



Leon A. Hausmaxx. . 



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