52 
BIRD CRADLES. 
start. I subsequently discovered the 
nest in a low-hanging fork of an apple- 
tree, and a dainty structure it was, ex¬ 
quisitely adorned with gray moss and 
skeleton leaves and in this case showing 
an unusual preference for dandelion 
seeds, with which its soft bulk was well 
felted. Inas¬ 
much as there 
were thousands 
of the dande¬ 
lion bulbs open¬ 
ing every sunny 
day this feat of 
forage was not 
one of anticij)a- 
tion of a natu¬ 
ral harvest; 
rather a ques¬ 
tion of econo¬ 
my of labor—a 
whole dande¬ 
lion baU at one 
compact j)inch. 
Wilson gives 
the nest mate¬ 
rial of the yel¬ 
low warbler as 
“silk-weed floss and willow cotton,” which 
present a singular incongruity as to 
chronology, the Avillow cotton being a 
buoyant feature of the May breeze, 
while the asclepias does not take wing 
until late August and September, the 
silky seeds of the jDreAuous year being 
then of course obliterated. Is it 2)ossible 
that the Avarbler, like the redstart, may 
anticipate the bursting pod b}^ an occa¬ 
sional burglary, assisted perhaps by 
those hairy caterpillars which so often 
lay bare the interior ? How else the bird 
could procure the material is a mystery. 
The “ cat-tail ” is an inexhaustible 
store of down for the later nest-builders. 
Packed Avith incredible compactness in 
its cylindrical equilibrium, when once 
ruptured—the keystone among the feath¬ 
ered seeds once removed as it were— 
Avhat a revelation ! The magician’s in¬ 
exhaustible hat is not a circumstance to 
it. Polling out in fluffy masses, a very 
effervescence of down, which seems to 
multiply to infinity even after launching 
in the air. Unless my estimate of bird- 
Avisdom is much overAvrought, it finds 
its way into many a warm nest. 
But it is not alone to the soft seeds 
and suddenly saw him fly to a branch 
near by Avith a tiny puff in his bill—a 
doAvny tuft on one side and a bundle of 
seeds on the other—the spot from which 
he fleAV disclosing one of the tell-tale 
rifled calyxes of the dandelion. The 
bird, not immediately identified, soon 
spread its name abroad in the rosy 
gleam from its fan-shaped tail—the red¬ 
Ruby Throat Humming Bird, Blue-gray 
Gnatcatcher, and Black-and-white 
Warbler. 
