BIRDS’—NESTS 107 
was destroyed more than a score of times. This 
jealous little wretch has the wise forethought, when 
the box in which he builds contains two compart- 
ments, to fill up one of them, so as to avoid the 
risk of troublesome neighbors. 
The less skillful builders sometimes depart from 
their usual habit, and take up with the abandoned 
nest of some other species. The blue jay now and 
then lays in an old crow’s nest or cuckoo’s nest. 
The crow blackbird, seized with a fit of indolence, 
drops its eggs in the cavity of a decayed branch. 
I heard of a cuckoo that dispossessed a robin of its 
nest; of another that set a blue jay adrift. Large, 
loose structures, like the nests of the osprey and 
certain of the herons, have been found with half a 
dozen nests of the blackbird set in the outer edges, 
like so many parasites, or, as Audubon says, like 
the retainers about the rude court of a feudal baron. 
The same birds breeding in a southern climate ' 
construct far less elaborate nests than when breed- 
ing in a northern climate. Certain species of water- 
fowl, that abandon their eggs to the sand and the 
sun in the warmer zones, build a nest and sit in 
the usual way in Labrador. In Georgia, the Balti- 
more oriole places its nest upon the north side of 
the tree; in the Middle and Eastern States, it fixes 
it upon the south or east side, and makes it much 
thicker and warmer. JI have seen one from the 
South that had some kind of coarse reed or sedge 
woven into it, giving it an open-work appearance, 
like a basket. 
