The Bush-Tits 
race. A beautiful home is more than meat or drink to them. For its 
construction they are ready to forswear the delights of foreign travel, 
and to its embellishment they devote every surplus energy, even after 
the babies have come. Your Bush-Tit is no songster. A prosy keep-in- 
touch-note, tsit or shlit, and an excited chitter, creeee , are all he can achieve 
from year’s end to year’s end; but, by the same token, he is an esthete 
when it comes to choice of harmonious settings, to selection of materials, 
and linings and draperies and laces withal. 
Nest-building begins universally some time in March, and this irre¬ 
spective of whether the setting is a live oak with its perennial cover, or 
a spiraea bush just struggling into leaf, or a bleak grayness of dead branches 
with no cover at all. Indeed, when one regards the openness of some of 
the situations chosen, it is a marvel that the nests should ever escape 
notice. But however exposed the nest may be, the materials used in its 
construction are likely to be harmonious in color, if not in texture, with 
their surroundings. Besides, it is really astonishing how many accidental 
collections of leaves, sprays of mistletoe, withered pannicles of spiraea, 
hanging bunches of moss, and what not, simulate, and so abet the escape 
of an object so boldly shaped as a Bush-Tit’s nest. 
In the northern or coastal portion of this bird’s range the pendent 
pouch is likely to be composed chiefly of mosses, but in the south other 
vegetable fibers must do duty; and always, everywhere, cobwebs are the 
webbing of the most diverse woof. Dead leaves already beplastered 
with spider webs are dragged in entire. The lining of the nest is composed 
variously, sometimes of felted plant downs exclusively, but often of felt 
mingled with wool, fur, or feathers. 
Egg-laying may begin as soon as the nest is decently framed, or 
again, it may be deferred for a week or ten days after the structure is 
practically complete. But, however that may be, the birds never rest 
from their artistic labors. A Bush-Tit's nest is like the Jamestown 
Fair, never finished. The nest must be ornamented with lichens, petals, 
spider-egg cases, bits of tissue paper,--in short, whatever takes the fancy 
of the birds in the course of their restless forays. Acacia blossoms are 
an undying favorite in the Southland. The interior furnishings, like¬ 
wise, must be continually augmented. If the bottom of the nest was only 
an inch thick at the outset, it is built up from within until it attains a 
thickness of two or three inches. Even though the eggs be near hatching, 
the thrifty housewife, as she returns from an airing, must needs lug in a 
beak!ul of feathers, which it would have been a shame to waste, you 
know. Besides this, the male bird has two or three shanties under con¬ 
struction in the neighborhood, upon which he can profitably put in those 
tedious hours between three a. m. and sunset. 
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