BY THE WAYSIDE 
43 
I 
family, while the mother sits near by, 
the next day the mother hunts the 
food and feeds the family while the 
father bird sings in the tree tops and 
preens his feathers, hunting up only 
one mouthful of food to every six or 
seven brought by the mother.” Mr. 
W. L. Finley says, “I have watched a 
good many bird families, but I never 
saw the work divided as it is in the 
grosbeak family. I have watched at 
some nests where the young are cared 
- for almost entirely by the mother and 
have seen others where those duties 
1 were taken up largely by the father. 
Manv times 1 have seen both parents 
j work side by side in rearing a family, 
but the grosbeaks seem to have a way 
of dividing duties equally, alternating 
days of rest and labor, that is particu¬ 
larly their own.” 
I followed the way of a street near the 
Columbia river, and. somewhat paral¬ 
leling it, and was interested in observ¬ 
ing some hanging nests,—one on a cot¬ 
tonwood (the Waucoma of the Indian), 
one on an Oregon maple, and one 
> swinging quite near a house on an oak. 
They were the nests of Bullock’s ori¬ 
ole. To me they seemed smaller than 
those of our Baltimore oriole, not so 
evenlv woven, nor so closed in at the 
top. However, they were “last year’s 
nests,” and had lost some of their 
shapeliness. 
In “Birds of the United States and 
Canada,” Nuttall, is the following par¬ 
agraph in regard to the rough-winged 
swallow:—“We are indebted to Audu¬ 
bon for the discovery of this species so 
much allied to the preceding bank 
' swallow, who first observed it near 
\ 
Bayou Sara, and afterwards in South 
Carolina, Of its habits he says noth¬ 
ing; but it is rare, and he thinks its 
habitual residence may prove to be far 
westward,—perhaps the valleys of the 
Columbia.” I believe it was my good 
fortune to see this bird in its nesting 
time. We had arrived in the Hood 
River Valley in the early spring of the 
winter previous to which I have been 
writing, and it was about the middle 
of May after our arrival that, as I sat 
in front of one of the large windows 
of the lobby of the Hotel Oregon, my 
attention was attracted by two birds 
along the eaves of the roof of the long, 
low, one-storied wooden building run¬ 
ning out to the corner on the side of 
the street opposite. I at once knew 
them to be swallows, but 1 also knew 
that I had never seen their like before. 
I watched them carry very daintily, 
material for their nest, bits of grass, 
and some soft stuff, and disappeared 
entirely from sight. I marked the 
spot with my eye carefully, and went 
over many times and looked the eaves 
over well. The roof was covered heav¬ 
ily with the green moss common to old 
buildings in a rainy winter climate, 
some of which the birds used, where 
it was dry, for their nest. There was a 
break in the outer edge of one of the 
shingles just at the eaves, and there 
Avas a tiny round hole just beneath. 
Into this the birds went, and their 
nest was clear out of sight. After 
awhile I could see them take in food 
for their nestlings, but, somehow, to 
my regret, I missed them bringing 
their young out to fly away. 
