COW BUNTING. 
289 
frequently observed loitering singly about solitary thickets, 
reconnoitering, 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 Fly- 
catcher, 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 Fly- 
catcher appear to be particular favourites ; and the kindness 
and affectionate 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 delay 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 dropt in it by the intruder. But when the owner 
herself has begun to lay, and there are one or more eggs in the 
nest before the Cow Bunting deposits hers, the attachment of 
VOL. i. 
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