io6 
SINGING BIRDS. 
tence, the strange egg on which they sat would generally be 
destroyed. 
VV’hen the female is disposed to lay, she appears restless and 
dejected, and separates from the unregarding flock. Stealing 
through the woods and thickets, she pries into the bushes and 
brambles for the nest that suits her, into which she darts in the 
absence of its owner, and in a few minutes is seen to rise on the 
wing, cheerful, and relieved from the anxiety that oppressed her, 
and proceeds back to the flock she had so reluctantly forsaken. 
If the egg be deposited in the nest alone, it is uniformly 
forsaken ; but if the nursing parent have any of her own, 
she immediately begins to sit. The Red-eyed Flycatcher, in 
whose beautiful basket-like nests I have observed these eggs, 
proves a very affectionate and assiduous nurse to the uncouth 
foundling. In one of these I found an egg of each bird, and 
the hen already sitting. I took her own egg and left the 
strange one ; she soon returned, and as if sensible of what 
had happened, looked with steadfast attention, and shifted the 
egg about, then sat upon it, but soon moved off, again renewed 
her observation, and it was a considerable time before she 
seemed willing to take her seat ; but at length I left her on 
the nest. Two or three days after, I found that she had relin- 
quished her attention to the strange egg and forsaken the 
nest. Another of these birds, however, forsook the nest on 
taking out the Cowbird’s egg, although she had still tw'o of her 
own left. The only example, perhaps, to the contrary of de- 
serting the nest when solely occupied by the stray egg, is in 
the Bluebird, who, attached strongly to the breeding-places in 
which it often continues for several years, has been known to 
lay, though with apparent reluctance, after the deposition of 
the Cowbird’s egg. My friend Mr. C. Pickering found two 
nests of the Summer-yellow Bird, in which had been deposited 
an egg of the Cowbird previously to any of their own ; and 
unable to eject it, they had buried it in the bottom of the nest 
and built over it an additional story ! I also saw, in the sum- 
mer of 1830, a similar circumstance with the same bird, in 
which the Cowbird’s egg, though incarcerated, was still visible 
