Rare and Curious Nests. 273 
in and day out, during its entire summer stay, it pursues the 
even tenor of its life, happy and contented, never caring, like 
many of its remoter kin, for the charmed circle of man. 
Active, energetic and buoyant with hope, it skips about the 
tall rank herbage, in every direction, in quest of insects, 
making its presence known and felt by the lively chattering 
song, which resembles more nearly the sounds of an insect 
than those of a bird, which emanates from its grassy haunts. 
As these birds reach their breeding-grounds early in May, 
nest-building is soon begun, but so secret and mysterious 
are their movements at first, that we hardly know anything 
of their presence, except when they are colonized for the 
summer. The labor of building is entered into with con- 
siderable alacrity, and is mainly the result of the combined 
labor of both birds. Their nests are usually placed in low 
bushes, a few feet above the ground, or woven into the tops 
of sedges out of the reach of ordinary tides; but in very 
rare instances upon the ground in the midst of a clump of 
grasses. Ground nests are loosely-constructed affairs, which 
is not the case with those that are elevated to the tops of 
tussocks, or to the branches of shrubs and trees, which 
require more compactness and a better finish. The most 
beautiful, as well as artistic, nest which I have ever seen is 
the one shown in the cut. This nest was discovered in 
the vicinity of Philadelphia in the summer of 1878. A 
willow-branch, some fifteen feet above the ground, which 
was bifurcated, was made to do service. No ordinary skill 
was that which surmounted the seemingly insuperable 
difficulty of building a nest, not pensile in character, to 
such a swaying branch. That the birds accomplished the 
feat the nest itself was the evidence. In form this nest 
was nearly globular, four and a half and five inches in the 
two diameters. It was woven of the broad leaves of a 
species of scirpus, closely and evenly, and had its inter- 
stices well seamed with brownish cottony down. A thin 
delicate curtain of gauze, of the same material, hung around 
