12 
INTRODUCTION. 
patches of lichen, gives her nest the appearance of a moss-grown 
knot. A similar artifice is employed by our Yellow Breasted Fly- 
catcher or Vireo, and others. The Golden-Crowned Thrush ( Sylvia 
aurocapilla) makes a nest like an oven, erecting an arch over it, so 
perfectly resembling the tussuck in which it is concealed, that it is 
only discoverable by the emotion of the female when startled from 
its covert. 
The Butcher-bird is said to draw around him his feathered 
victims by treacherously imitating their notes. The Kingfisher of 
Europe is believed to allure his prey by displaying the brilliancy 
of his colors, as he sits near some sequestered place on the margin 
of a rivulet ; the fish, attracted by the splendor of his fluttering and 
expanded wings, are detained, while the wily fisher takes an un- 
erring aim.* The Erne, and our Bald Eagle, gain a great part of 
their subsistence by watching the success of the Fish-Hawk, and 
robbing him of his finny prey as soon as it is caught. In the same 
way also the rapacious Burgomaster or Glaucus Gull ( Larus glancus) 
of the North, levies his tribute of food from all the smaller species 
of his race, who knowing his strength and ferocity, are seldom in- 
clined to dispute his piratical claims. Several species of Cuckoo, 
and the Cow-Troopial of America, habitually deposit their eggs in 
tire nests of other small birds, to whose deceived affection are com- 
mitted the preservation and rearing of the parasitic and vagrant 
brood. The instinctive arts of birds are numerous; but treachery, 
like that which obtains in these parasitic species, is among the 
rarest expedients of nature in the feathered tribes ; though not un- 
common among some insect families. 
The art displayed by birds in the construction of their temporary 
habitations, or nests, is also deserving of passing attention. Among 
the Gallinaceous tribe, including our land domestic species, as well 
as the aquatic and wading kinds, scarcely any attempt at a nest is 
made. The birds which swarm along the sea-coast, often deposit 
their eggs on the bare ground, sand, or slight depressions in shelving 
rocks ; governed alone by grosser wants, their mutual attachment is 
feeble or nugatory, and neither art nor instinct prompts attention to 
the construction of a nest, the less necessary, indeed, as the young 
take to the water as soon as hatched, and early release themselves 
from parental dependence. The habits of the other aquatic birds 
* The bright feathers of this bird enter often successfully, with others, into the 
composition of the most attractive artificial flies employed by angleis. 
