BIRD CRADLES. 113 
they should have witnessed the subsequent vocal exercises. The 
feather-bed disclosed twelve pinkish eggs by actual count, for I 
remember in humiliation my scandalous pride at having “ eleven 
duplicates for trade.” 
There are a number of especially well-known favorites among 
the nests which should be mentioned, either one of which is a 
sufficient quest for a summer's walk. 
There is the grass hammock 
of the indigo-bird, so artfully 
swung between two or 
three upright branches 
of weed; the skilfully 
woven basket of the 
red-wing blackbird 
in the bog, either ss 
meshed within its 
tussock, twisted into 
the button-bush, or 
suspended among the 
reeds. Then there are 
the quaint covered nests 
of the oven-bird at the 
edge of the brook, the beehive of the 
marsh-wren among the sedges, or the . 2; 
Maryland yellow-throat in the swamp, and es | 
the rare snuggeries of the golden-crested 
wren and blue, yellow-backed warbler—the 
former a tiny hermitage, built on the 
branch of an evergreen, composed of moss and lichen, with only 
a small hole left for entrance, and the interior lined with down; 
the latter a dainty den, constructed, according to Samuels, of the 
“long gray Spanish moss (lichen?) so plentiful in the States of 
Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont. The long hairs of the 
moss are woven and twined together in a large mass, on one 
side of which is the entrance to the nest—a mere hole in the 
moss. The lining is nothing but the same material, only of finer 
15 
TO FEATHER THE NEST, 
