THE BUILDING OF THE NEST. 



Next comes the Catbird, -with a twig lattice, and the 

 Wren, with a feather-lined pile in the little house provided 

 for her ; or, lacking the house, she uses an old hat or boot 

 leg, instead. The Thrasher chooses a stout bush, and tosses 

 together a bunch of grape-vine bark, sedge grass, and strong 

 tendrils, in a way to correspond with his bravura music. 

 The Purple Finch sets his large, sparrow-like nest in a high 

 bush ; you must visit it often, for you will always hear good 

 music close by. 



The Flicker utilizes a soft place in the swamp maple, 

 boring his nest hole with great accuracy ; the Yellow War- 

 bler and Hummingbird strip the soft wool that wrapped 

 the big, juicy Osmunda ferns in their winter sleep. The 

 Warbler mixes the fernwool with cobwebs and milkweed 

 flax, taking it to the apple tree; while the Hummingbird 

 bears his load to a mossed cedar branch, and rounds a two- 

 inch nest, blending it with the branch until it looks merely as 

 if lichens had encrusted a raised knot hole. Next you will 

 admire the work of the weavers, — the Orioles and Vireos. 

 The darned basket of the Orchard Oriole is, perhaps, set 

 in the strawberry-apple tree, as if to catch its early fruit; he 

 makes his beak point his shuttle ; as Coues says, antedating 

 Elias Howe, who invented a needle with the eye at the 

 point ; and the Baltimore Oriole treads flax from old milk- 

 weed stalks, gathering his string far and near. The Balti- 

 more Oriole builds too well to work quickly ; and the pouch, 

 sometimes eight inches deep, swings freely and firmly from 

 its branch, so placed as to be safe from above and below. 



The Vireos make a little pocket (like a stocking heel set 

 between the knitting-needles) which is fastened firmly in 

 the fork of a small branch. Woven into it are papers, 

 scraps of hornets' nests, and flakes of decayed wood. The 

 Solitary Vireo adds hair and fur to his, and the Bed-eyed 

 Vireo, the wings of moths and other insects, cocoons, and 

 snake skins. It was in the nest of this Vireo, that Hamil- 

 ton G-ibson found twisted a bit of newspaper, whose single 

 legible sentence read; " . . . have in view the will of 

 God," 



19 



