Bem ca 
THE TRAGEDIES OF THE NESTS. 
Tue life of the birds, especially of our mi- 
gratory song-birds, is a series of adventures 
and of hair-breadth escapes by flood’ and 
field. Very few of them probably die a natural 
death or even live out half their appointed 
days. The home instinct is strong in birds as 
it is in most creatures; and I am convinced 
that every spring a large number of those which 
have survived the Southern campaign return 
to their old haunts to breed. A Connecticut 
farmer took me out under his porch one April 
day and showed me a pheebe bird’s nest six 
stories high. The same bird had no doubt 
returned year after year; and, as there was 
room for only one nest upon her favorite shelf, 
she had each season reared a new superstruct- 
ure upon the old asa foundation. I have heard 
of a white robin—an albino—that nested 
several years in succession in the suburbs of a 
Maryland city. Asparrow with a very marked 
peculiarity of song I have heard several sea- 
sons in my own locality. But the birds do 
not all live to return to their old haunts: the 
bobolinks and starlings run a gauntlet of fire 
from the Hudson to the Savannah, and the 
robins and meadow-larks and other song-birds 
are shot by boys and pot-hunters in great 
numbers,— to say nothing of their danger from 
hawks and owls. But, of those that do return, 
what perils beset their nests, even in the most 
favored localities! The cabins of the early 
settlers, when the country was swarming 
with hostile Indians, were not surrounded by 
such dangers. The tender households of the 
birds are not only exposed to‘hostile Indians 
in the shape of cats and collectors, but to 
numerous murderous and blood-thirsty ani- 
mals, against whom they have no defense but 
concealment. They lead the darkest kind of 
pioneer life, even in our gardens and orchards 
and under the walls of our houses. Nota day 
or a night passes, from the time the eggs are 
laid till the young are flown, when the chances 
are not greatly in favor of the nest being rifled 
and its contents devoured,—by owls, skunks, 
minks, and coons at. night, and by crows, 
jays, squirrels, weasels, snakes, and rats dur- 
ing the day. Infancy, we say, is hedged about 
by many perils; but the infancy of birds is 
cradled and pillowed in peril. An old Michi- 
gan settler told me that the first six children 
that were born to: him died; malaria and teeth- 
ing invariably carried them off when they had 
reached a certain age; but other children were 
born, the country improved, and by and by 
VoL. XXVI.— 64. 
the babies weathered the critical period, and 
the next six lived and grew up. The birds, 
too, would no doubt persevere six times and 
twice six times, if the season were long enough, 
and finally rear their family, but the waning 
summer cuts them short, and but few species 
have the heart and strength to make even the 
third trial. 
My neighborhood on the Hudson is perhaps 
exceptionally unfavorable as a breeding haunt 
for birds, owing to the abundance of fish: 
crows and of red squirrels; and the past sea- 
son seems to have been a black-letter one, 
even for this place, for at least nine nests 
out of every ten that I observed during the 
spring and summer of 1881 failed of their 
proper issue. From the first nest I noted, 
which was that of a bluebird,— built (very 
imprudently I thought at the time) in a squir- 
rel hole in a decayed apple-tree, about the last 
of April, and which came to naught, even the 
mother-bird, I suspect, perishing by a violent 
death,— to the last, which was that of a snow- 
bird, observed in August, deftly concealed 
in a mossy bank by the side of a road that 
skirted a wood, where the tall thimble black- 
berries grew in abundance, and from which 
the last young one was taken when it was 
about half grown by some nocturnal walker 
or daylight prowler,—some untoward fate 
seemed hovering about them. It was a sea- 
son of calamities, of violent deaths, of pillage 
and massacre, among our feathered neighbors. 
For the first time, I noticed that the orioles 
were not safe in their strong pendent nests. 
Three broods were started in the apple-trees, 
only a few yards from the house, where, for 
several previous seasons, the birds had nested 
without molestation ; but this time the young 
were all destroyed when about half grown. 
Their chirping and chattering, which was so 
noticeable one day, suddenly ceased the 
next. The nests were probably plundered at 
night, and doubtless by the little red screech- 
owl, which I know is a denizen of these old 
orchards, living in the deeper cavities of the 
trees. The owl could alight upon the top of 
the nest, and easily thrust his murderous claw 
down into its long pocket and seize the young 
and draw them forth. The tragedy of one of 
the nests was heightened, or at least made 
more palpable, by one of the half-fledged 
birds, either in its attempt to escape or while 
in-the clutches of the enemy, being caught 
and entangled in one of the horse-hairs by 
