COW B UN TING. 289 



and April can have no opportunity of depositing their eggs 

 here, there being not more than one or two of our small birds 

 which build so early. Those that pass in May and June are 

 frequently observed loitering singly about solitary thickets, 

 reconnoitring, no doubt, for proper nurses, to whose care they 

 may commit the hatching of their eggs and the rearing of 

 their helpless orphans. Among the birds selected for this 

 duty are the following, all of which are figured and described 

 in this volume : — The blue bird, which builds in a hollow 

 tree ; the chipping sparrow, in a cedar bush ; the golden- 

 crowned thrush, on the ground, in the shape of an oven ; 

 the red-eyed flycatcher, a neat pensile nest, hung by the two 

 upper edges on a small sapling or drooping branch ; the 

 yellow bird, in the fork of an alder; the Maryland yellow- 

 throat, on the ground, at the roots of brier bushes ; the white- 

 eyed flycatcher, a pensile nest on the bending of a smilax 

 vine ; and the small blue-gray flycatcher, also a pensile nest, 

 fastened to the slender twigs of a tree, sometimes at the height 

 of fifty or sixty feet from the ground. The three last- 

 mentioned nurses are represented on the same plate with the 

 bird now under consideration. There are, no doubt, others 

 to whom the same charge is committed ; but all these I have 

 myself met with acting in that capacity. 



Among these, the yellow-throat and the red-eyed flycatcher 

 appear to be particular favourites ; and the kindness and affec- 

 tionate attention which these two little birds seem to pay to 

 their nurslings, fully justify the partiality of the parents. 



It is well known to those who have paid attention to the 

 manners of birds, that, after their nest is fully finished, a 

 day or two generally elapses before the female begins to lay. 

 This delny is in most cases necessary to give firmness to the 

 yet damp materials, and allow them time to dry. In this state 

 it is sometimes met with, and laid in by the cow bunting ; 

 the result of which I have invariably found to be the desertion 

 of the nest by its rightful owner, and the consequent loss of 

 the egg thus dropped in it by the intruder. But when the 



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