INTRODUCTION. 5 



§ E. If you have an opportunity, study the works of Wilson 

 and Audubon. The former's figures are very lifelike, and 

 their coloring generally true, though often too high-toned or 

 otherwise incorrect. It is still more worth your while to 

 examine the collection of the Boston Society of Natural His- 

 tory.' If this is inaccessible to you, another is probably more 

 worthy of your attention than descriptions, or even accurate 

 paintings. 



§ F. A nest containing sound eggs, but without the parent 

 birds, generally indicates that all the eggs have not been laid, 

 or that the parents are temporarily absent. Should you find 

 an incomplete nest, you must judge for yourself how soon it 

 will be finished. A pair of our smaller birds, in the latter 

 part of May or in June, ordinarily spend from five to ten days 

 in building one, and sometimes end their work sufficiently in 

 advance to allow the female a vacation for a day or even two. 

 Earlier in the season, other birds are generally occupied two 

 or three weeks. Woodpeckers are very uncertain in this 

 respect, and it is often difficult to decide when their nests 

 should be broken into to get the eggs, unless one can watch 

 them closely at their work (carried on chiefly in the morning) 

 and observe the final cessation of chips.* The Creepers, Nut- 

 hatches, Chickadees, and certain Wrens customarily lay their 

 eggs in deserted Woodpeckers' holes or other cavities, which 

 they line with warm materials, though the Chickadees occa- 

 sionally excavate for themselves with great and long-continued 

 labor. 



After the first egg has been laid, one is generally added on 

 each succeeding day (apparently most often in the morning) 



' The tuilding of this Society is on since separated, and are now exhibited 



Berkeley Street (near Boylston) in in a room devoted to the fauna of New 



Boston. It is at present open to the England. — W. B. 



public on Wednesdays and Saturdays * A small wire scoop, furnished with 



from 10 A. M. to 5 p. m. The birds of gauze netting', and attached to a long. 



New England are not separated from flexible wire handle, can be u-sed to ex- 



those belonging to other parts of the plore the hole and remove or if neces- 



world." sary replace the eggs. — W. B. 



" The New England birds have been 



