158 American Birds 



When it comes to housekeeping, I give the Englisher 

 credit for wanting something new and up-to-date. He 

 loves the crosspiece in the protected top of an electric arc 

 lamp. There he gets free light and heat. For second 

 choice, he takes a bird-box or protected nook about a 

 building. If necessary, he takes to a tree, but he does not 

 like this, for nest building in a tree is more difficult. If 

 hard pushed, he will even take a rain spout or a gutter 

 along the eaves of the house. You can't " stump " a spar- 

 row for a nesting site. 



Down near the lower end of sparrow row some hor- 

 nets built a nest up under the projecting eaves of the front 

 porch of a cottage, just beside the bracket. I can under- 

 stand how a pair of sparrows will fight for a bird-box and 

 drive other birds away, but I never dreamed they would 

 be envious of the hornets. But a sparrow must have a 

 place to nest. Whether the hornets left voluntarily or 

 with the aid of the sparrows I do not know, but the next 

 time I passed I found the birds in possession — actually 

 making a home in a hornet's nest. They had gone in 

 through the bracket and pulled out a large part of the 

 comb, and were replacing it with grass and feathers. 



Think of raising a family of birds in a hornet's nest 

 — not one, but several families! When the young spar- 

 rows grew older, I looked to see the bottom fall out and 

 drop the nestful of little brats to the porch, but It didn't. 

 The hornet's nest remained as strong as if it had been 

 made for sparrows. And the sparrows liked It Immense- 

 ly; It was a novelty, and not another pair around had a 

 home like theirs. 



The cock-sparrow was proud of his home. He helped 



