BIRDS' NESTS. 
513 
architects than others. The robhis generally build firmly, and 
their nests often remain through the winter. The red-eyed vireo, 
or greenlet, or fly-catcher, as you please, is one of our most skill- 
ful buildei-s ; his nest is pendulous, and generally placed in a 
small tree — a dog- wood, where he can find one ; he uses some 
odd materials : withered leaves, bits of hornets' nests, flax, scraps 
of paper, and fibres of grape-vine bark ; he lines it with caterpil- 
lars' webs, hair, fine grasses, and fibres of bark. These nests are 
so durable, that a yellow-bird has been known to place her own 
over an old one of a previous year, made by this bird ; and field- 
mice, probably the jumping-mice, are said frequently to take pos- 
session of them after the vireo and its brood are gone. But the red- 
eyed greenlet is rather a wood-bird, and we must not look for his 
nest in the village. His brother, the white-eyed greenlet, frequently 
builds in towns, even in the ornamental trees of our largest cities, 
in the fine sycamores of the older streets of Philadelphia, for in- 
stance. 
The nests about our village door-yards and streets are chiefly 
those of the robin, goldfinch, yellow-bird, song-sparrow, chipping- 
bird, oriole, blue-bird, wren, Phoebe-bird, and cat-bird, with now 
and then a few greenlets ; probably some snow-birds also, about 
the garden hedges or fences. This last summer it looked very 
much as though we had also purple-finches in the village ; no 
nest Avas found, but the birds were repeatedly seen on the garden 
fences, near the same spot, at a time when they must have had 
young. Humming-birds doubtless build in the village, but their 
nests are rarely discovered ; and they are always so small, and such 
cunning imitations of tufts of lichens and mosses, that they are 
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