278 LAND-BIRDS AND GAME-BIRDS 
year after year. Audubon even proved in one case that the 
young returned with their parents, thus increasing the little 
colony which already existed on his plantation. No bird is 
more peaceable or less jealous than the Pewee, who looks hos- 
pitably upon all his neighbors, and it is common to find several 
pairs on the same estate, living in happiness and peace. 
As I sit down to write out of doors, I find that my attention 
is but little confined to my biographical labors. I have placed 
in the shrubbery around the piazza several bits of cotton-wool, 
which readily attract the attention of the various birds who 
are now building. A male Redstart is singing in the oak on 
the bank, while his mate cautiously approaches a vine, from 
which my chair is scarcely a yard distant, and, seizing several 
shreds of the wool, flies off. Eager to discover her home, just 
as I have already discovered those of nearly all her friends 
(and mine too), I step on the lawn to watch her motions. She 
flies to the nearest group of trees and disappears, while I fix 
my eyes upon ‘the cotton-wool, to watch her return; but, when 
some sound causes me to turn my head, I see her pulling at an- 
other piece, in the opposite direction. How cautious she is of 
betraying her purpose, and what a vacillating course she takes 
from tree to tree! Is she not evidently an unusually cautious 
bird? A neighbor, one of her own species, without waiting for 
warmer weather, has already finished a nest, and laid egys, ina 
birch on the’edge of the swamp, and a “ Black-throated Green,” 
who built in the piazza-vines, last year, showed no hesitation 
in building while persons were near. But here is the Red- 
start again; she is now refreshing herself by catching flies. 
It is after nine o’clock, and she has probably worked for sev- 
eral hours; but she denies herself rest, and again approaches 
the vine, this time to gather several little strips of bark, with 
which she flies directly to the orchard. As she enters a pear- 
tree, pauses a moment, and then flies off, I feel sure that her 
nest is there, and so post myself close to the trunk of a neigh- 
boring apple-tree, motionless and silent, to await her return. 
She immediately reappears, and, apparently not realizing my 
presence, enters her nest, which is already shaped, and firmly 
