368 
INSECTIVOROUS BIRDS. 
novel situation fell over, but was carried with the young 
to a safe situation near the piazza of the house, where the 
parents now fed and reared their brood. In an apple- 
tree, in another garden, a nest of this bird was made 
chiefly, to the lining, of loose white cotton strings, which 
had been used for training up some raspberry bushes, 
and looked as white and conspicuous as a snow-ball. 
Sometimes they condescend to the familiarity of picking 
up the sweepings of the seamstress ; such as thread, 
yarn, sewing-silk, fine shreds of cotton stockings, and 
bits of lace and calico ; and it is not uncommon to ob- 
serve hasty disputes between our little architects and 
the Baltimore birds, as they sometimes seize and tug up- 
on the loose or flowing ends and strings of the unfinished 
nest, to the great annoyance of the legitimate operators. 
The labor of forming the nest seems often wholly to de- 
volve on the female. On the 16th of May, I observed one 
of these industrious matrons busily engaged with her 
fabric in a low barberry bush, and by the evening of the 
second day, the whole was completed to the lining, 
which was made, at length, of hair and willow down, of 
which she collected and carried mouthfuls so large that 
she often appeared almost like a mass of flying cotton, and 
far exceeded in industry her active neighbour, the Balti- 
more, who was also engaged in collecting the same ma- 
terials. Notwithstanding this industry, the completion 
of the nest, with this and other small birds, is sometimes 
strangely protracted or not immediately required. Yet, 
occasionally, I have found the eggs of this species im- 
providently laid on the ground. They are usually about 4 
or 5, of a dull white, thickly sprinkled near the great 
end with various sized specks of pale brown. It is amus- 
ing to observe the sagacity of this little bird in disposing 
of the eggs of the vagrant and parasitic Cow Troopial. 
