THE BAYA BIRD. 123 



crowded; just room enough, too, for the nestlings 

 until they brim over its mossy sides and fly away to 

 build homes for themselves ; just the combination 

 of hammock, house, and cradle that best suits the 

 winged home-makers who never stay indoors except 

 to brood their little ones to life with their soft, warm 

 bodies, and to feed them until they have attained 

 strength and bird wisdom sufficient for self-support. 



So temporary and merely incidental to the whirl 

 of sportive delight which constitutes their life do 

 many tribes of feathered gypsies consider the nest, 

 that its construction is as slight and unelaborated as 

 the shelter of hemlock boughs built by lone hunters 

 for a night's encampment ; but, slight as it may be, it 

 is never inartistic or unsuitable. Indeed, it can not 

 be said without reservation that one nest is better or 

 more skillfully built than another, since all are per- 

 fectly adapted to the purjDOses, habits, and require- 

 ments of their builders; but the degrees of labor 

 spent in their construction are as varied as the situa- 

 tions in which birds place their nests or the material 

 with which they build them. 



It so happens that one of the wisest and most 

 teachable of little birds is also the builder of one of 

 the most beautiful and elaborate of nests. This is the 

 baya {NeUcurvius hay a) of India. The nest it makes 

 might be easily mistaken for some grass-made, closely 

 woven, flask-shaped basket of native human manu- 

 facture. Dr. Jordane, in his Birds of India, says, in 

 regard to the nest : 



" It is apparently made of grass of different kinds, 



