THE BLUEBIRD 195 
acting as guard and flying above and in advance of 
the female. She brings all the material and does 
all the work of building, he looking on and encour- 
aging her with gesture and song. He acts also as 
inspector of her work, but I fear is a very partial 
one. She enters the nest with her bit of dry grass 
or straw, and, having adjusted it to her notion, with- 
draws and waits near by while he goes in and looks 
it over. On coming out he exclaims very plainly, 
“ Excellent! excellent!” and away the two go 
again for more material. 
The bluebirds, when they build about the farm 
buildings, sometimes come in conflict with the swal- 
lows. The past season I knew a pair to take forci- 
ble possession of the domicile of a pair of the latter, 
—the cliff species that now stick their nests under 
the eaves of the barn. The bluebirds had been 
broken up in a little bird-house near by, by the rats 
or perhaps a weasel, and being no doubt in a bad 
humor, and the season being well advanced, they 
made forcible entrance into the adobe tenement of 
their neighbors, and held possession of it for some 
days, but I believe finally withdrew, rather than 
live amid such a squeaky, noisy colony. I have 
heard that these swallows, when ejected from their 
homes in that way by the phoebe-bird, have been 
known to fall to and mason up the entrance to the 
nest while their enemy was inside of it, thus having 
a revenge as complete and cruel as anything in 
human annals. 
The bluebirds and the house wrens more fre- 
