The Audubon Warbler 



is equally at home in the village park, in the loftiest fir trees, or in the 

 dwarfed pines of timberline. Under such diversity of conditions, the 

 bird's habits must differ widely; and, indeed, it is difficult to generalize 

 with reference to its nesting. 



In any case, the absorbing duty of springtime is nesting, and to 

 this art the Audubons give themselves with becoming ardor. The 

 female does the work while the male cheers her on with song, and not 

 infrequently trails about after her, useless but sympathetic. Into a 

 certain tidy grove in the North the bird-man strayed one crisp morning 

 in April. The fir trees stood about like decorous candle-sticks, but 

 the place hummed with Western Golden-crowned Kinglets and clattered 

 with Juncoes and Audubons. One Audubon, a female, advertised her 

 business to all comers. I saw her on the ground wrestling with a large, 

 white chicken-feather, and sputtering excitedly between tussles. The 



feather was evidently 

 too big or too stiff or 

 too wet for her proper 

 taste; but finally she 

 flew away with it across 

 the grove, chipping 

 triumphantly. And 

 since there were other 

 feathers and since she 

 repeated her precise 

 course three times, the 

 bird-man had little 

 trouble in tracing her 

 to her nest some fifteen 

 rods away and forty 

 feet up in an ascending 

 fir branch. 



When the nest was 

 presumed to be ripe, I 

 ascended. It was found 

 settled into the foliage 

 and steadied by diverg- 

 ing twigs at a point some 

 six or seven feet out 

 along the limb. None of the branches in the vicinity were individually 

 safe, but by dint of standing on one, sitting on another, and clinging 

 to a third, I made an equitable distribution of avoirdupois and grasped 

 the treasure. Perhaps in justice the supporting branches should have 



476 



Taken in Washington Photo by the A utlior 



NEST AND EGGS OF AUDUBON WARBLER 



