ings are congenial the birds will occupy it. It should be placed on the top of a 

 stout post, certainly twenty-five feet high. The house should be divided into 

 compartments, each seven by eight by ten inches, and the entrance hole should 

 be nearly as large as a silver dollar. The martins like the open, and their home 

 should be built a little apart from the trees. 



The house wren is a tuneful and most curiously interesting summer com- 

 panion. This bird will nest in a stovepipe hat if it is hung up in a tempting 

 place. The hat should be nailed to the side of the barn or the house or the porch 

 pillar, with the top outward. A hole just the size of a quarter of a dollar in 

 the center of the crown of the hat makes a proper doorway, big enough for the 

 wren to go in and out, and small enougli to keep the English sparrow from 

 invading. 



Wren houses can be made beautiful enough to be an ornament to the garden. 

 But the wrens don't care for beauty ; they look for comfort and protection, and 

 they will leave a bijou box of a house vacant to take up quarters in a tomato can, 

 provided the can has the better site. 



The English sparrows drive the wrens away, although the house wren has 

 a fighting spirit all out of proportion to its size. The sparrow overcomes it, but 

 only by sheer force of numbers. One wren can thrash ten sparrows, but he 

 can't thrash a hundred. The small hole in the nesting box is the salvation of the 

 wren and its housekeeping. 



It has been said that the house wren is a curiously interesting bird to watch. 

 While the female is covering her eggs the male frequently busies himself with 

 building, or partly building, make-believe nests. He will give over perhaps five 

 minutes of every hour of his eating time to the labor of carrying small twigs 

 and straws into various nooks and corners of the piazza or of the wood pile. No 

 one knows just why the bird does this, but it seems to amuse him and he tries to 

 be as secretive about the operation as if it were really the intention of himself 

 and his wife to make use of the dozen holes which he has stufifed full of material. 

 ]\Iarsh wrens, which are cousins of the house wrens, have been known actually 

 to complete two or three nests before they decide definitely which one they ought 

 to occupy for housekeeping purposes. 



The bluebird is a beauty. It was a trifle amusing last winter to hear that 

 early spring was certain because bluebirds had been seen in Maryland and in 

 Pennsylvania late in January. There are bluebirds in Maryland and in Pennsyl- 

 vania and in other states of the same latitude all the winter through. 



The bluebird's natural nesting-place is a hole in a tree or in a decayed 

 stump. It takes kindly, however, to the house which man prepares for it, and 

 if the English sparrows are not too many for it, it will nest in a box nailed under 

 the piazza, under the eave trough of a low roof, or placed in a tree or on a post 

 in the garden. The bluebird's song is said to be the only true love song in Nature. 

 It has one song for spring and another for autumn, and each has an appealing 

 quality which no man yet properly has been able to sense in words. It is a 

 mannerly bird, aiYectionate and confiding. 



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