DEVIOUS PATHS 
is reversed, the females having the ornaments and 
bright colors and doing the courting, while the 
male does the incubating. In a few cases also the 
female is much the more masculine, noisy, and pug- 
nacious. With some of our common birds, such as 
the woodpeckers, the chickadee, and the swallows, 
both sexes take part in nest-building. 
It is a very pretty sight to witness a pair of wood 
thrushes building their nest. Indeed, what is there 
about the wood thrush that is not pleasing? He is 
a kind of visible embodied melody. Some birds are 
so sharp and nervous and emphatic in their move- 
ments, as the common snowbird or junco, the flash- 
ing of whose white tail quills expresses the character 
of the bird. But all the ways of the wood thrush 
are smooth and gentle, and suggest the melody of its 
song. It is the only bird thief I love to see carrying 
off my cherries. It usually takes only those dropped 
upon the ground by other birds, and with the red 
or golden globe impaled upon its beak, its flight 
across the lawn is a picture delightful to behold. 
One season a pair of them built a nest in a near-by 
grove; morning after morning, for many mornings, I 
used to see the two going to and from the nest, over 
my vineyard and currant patch and pear orchard, in 
quest of, or bringing material for, the structure. They 
flew low, the female in the lead, the male just behind 
in line with her, timing his motions to hers, the two 
making a brown, gently undulating line, very pretty 
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