breaks it. Sometimes, a bird too small to do this, builds a 

 second story to her nest, thus burying the strange egg with 

 some of her own below. Then she will lay another clutch of 

 eggs in the upper nest and rear her family in peace. Far 

 oftener, however, the little bird settles down on the nest and 

 hatches the strange egg with her own. 



The Cowbird's egg being larger than the others comes 

 nearer to the mother-bird and receives more heat from her body ; 

 hence it hatches a day or two sooner than the smaller eggs. 

 Often the mother leaves her nest to seek food for the foreigner, 

 and as a result, her own eggs are chilled and never hatch. If 

 her eggs are hatched, the little ones may starve to death because 

 the young Cowbird, being larger and stronger, demands and 

 receives most of the food brought to the nest. In some cases 

 both kinds of birds grow up together in the one nest. After 

 the Cowbird has become larger than its foster parents, it con- 

 tinues to compel them to feed it. At last when fully grown, it 

 flies away to live with birds of its own feather without a word 

 of thanks to the kind friends that have reared it. 



The birds oftenest imposed upon by the Cowbird are the 

 little Yellow Warblers, the Chipping Sparrows and the Vireos. 

 Whenever you find a nest with one egg in it much larger than 

 the others, you may be sure it is a Cowbird's. If these birds 

 did not destroy quantities of troublesome insects, they would 

 have little to recommend them to our favor. With only 

 a gutteral duck-tse-e-e for a song, and with their unnatural 

 neglect of their young, they do not command either our love or 

 our respect. In October they take their departure for their 

 winter home in the South. 



83 



