14 
BY THE WAYSIDE 
fortunate than himself but of course Sir 
Rooster wanted his own worm. He began 
to gobble it as he ran like a very greedy 
boy. He then choked and ran to get 
some water. The hens looked disgusted 
and went hack to hunt worms for them 
selves. Belle Morgan. 
Mauston. Wis., May 15, 190/. 
Dear Wayside: 
To-day I saw a summer yellow bird. 
It was on the rail of the big bridge. 
When I came near it, it flew away. I 
never saw one before. They are very shy 
birds. It has as nice a nest or nicer 
than any other bird. They make it of 
milk weeds, strips of fine bark, lint and 
twigs. The lining is made of dandelion- 
balls woven together with horse hair. 
The summer yellow bird is yellow all 
over except the wings which have 
brown on the tips. The yellow on its 
wings is of a different shade. It is 
about tne size of a sparrow. They are 
very slender. 
Aged 12 years. Louise Turner. 
The Homes of Birds. 
Some birds’ nests are not only bunches 
of twigs, but they are constructed very 
carefully. 
The yellow warbler makes her nest of 
fine grass and lines it with a silky vege¬ 
table fibre which is very soft. On the 
outside it has strips of birch bark. 
Almost everyone has seen a field 
sparrow ’3 nest. It is coarse looking on 
the outside, but as soft inside as the 
yellow warbler’s. 
The meadow lark’s nest is hard to find 
because they hide them in the grass. My 
first sight of a meadow lark’s nest was as 
the female flew a short distance in the 
air, and then fell back as if wounded. 
The nest was in a tuft of dry grass at the 
bottom of a large tree, and it held five 
eggs of which four afterwards hatched. 
The goldfinch’s nest is built the same 
way as the yellow warbler’s. It is placed 
from five to twenty feet from the ground. 
The nest of the chimney swift is not 
soft, but very neatly shaped. The twigs 
are glued together with slime. The 
chimney-swift lays five white eggs. The 
female, if disturbed, will slowly raise her 
wings and flutter a little way down the 
chimney. 
A pair of flickers nested quite near my 
home one year and by rapping at the 
bottom of the tree-stump, the male would 
fly away followed by his mate. The nest 
of this bird is like the woodpecker’s 
nest, a hole drilled in a tree, a little larger 
at the bottom. These birds never came 
back and I missed them very much. 
But I was soon interested in a robin 
who afterwards built a nest. 
Aged 11. Linda Heiss. 
Appleton, Wis. 
Dear Wavside: 
I will tell vou about the house wren. 
•/ 
House wrens are interesting little birds. 
They are about five inches long, but be¬ 
cause the tail is so straight up in the air r 
it looks to be only three inches long. It 
is the shortest lived of all the birds. It 
lives only three years and then dies. 
We’ve had wrens build in our yard for 
many years. The first time the wren 
, came accidently. We had hung a waist 
on the line to dry, and before night a wren 
had started to build a cozy nest in one of 
the sleeves. When we found the nest in 
