THE TRAGEDIES OF THE NESTS. 
—a sort of split and abortive caw, and stamps 
it the sneak-thief it is. This crow is common 
farther south, but is not found in this State, 
so far as I have observed, except in the valley 
of the Hudson. 
The past season a pair of them built a nest 
in a Norway spruce that stood amid a dense 
growth of other ornamental trees near a large 
unoccupied country house. They sat down 
amid plenty. The wolf established himself in 
the fold. The many birds—robins, thrushes, 
finches, vireos, pewees— that seek the vicin- 
ity of dwellings (especially of these large 
country residences with their many trees and 
park-like grounds), for the greater safety of 
their eggs and young, were the easy. and 
convenient victims of these robbers. They 
plundered right and left, and were not dis- 
turbed till their young were nearly fledged, 
when some boys, who had long before marked 
them as their prize, rifled the nest. 
The song-birds nearly all build low; their 
cradle is not upon the tree-top. It is only birds 
of prey that fear danger from below more than 
from above and that seek the higher branches 
for their nests. A line five feet from the 
ground would run above more than half the 
nests, and one ten feet would bound more 
than three-fourths of them. It is only the 
oriole and the wood pewee that, as a rule, go 
higher than this. The crows and jays and 
other enemies of the birds have learned to 
explore this belt pretty thoroughly. But the 
leaves and the protective coloring of most 
nests baffle them as effectually, no doubt, as 
they do the professional odlogist. The nest of 
the red-eyed vireo is one of the most artfully 
placed in the wood. It is just beyond the 
point where the eye naturally pauses in its 
search, namely, on the extreme end of the 
lowest branch of the tree, usually four or five 
feet from the ground. One looks up and 
down and through the tree,— shoots his eye- 
beams into it as he might discharge his gun 
at some game hidden there, but the drooping 
tip of that low horizontal branch — who 
would think of pointing his piece just there? 
If a crow or other marauder were to alight 
upon the branch or upon those above it, the 
nest would be screened from him by the 
large leaf that usually forms a canopy imme- 
diately above it. The nest-hunter, standing 
at the foot of the tree and looking straight 
before him, might discover it easily, were it 
not for its soft, neutral gray tint which blends 
so thoroughly with the trunks and branches 
of trees. Indeed, I think there is no nest in 
the woods — no arboreal nest — so well con- 
cealed. The last one I saw was pendant from 
the end of a low branch of a maple, that 
nearly grazed the clapboards of an unused 
683 
hay-barn in a remote backwoods clearing. I 
peeped through a crack and saw the old birds 
feed the nearly fledged young within a few 
inches of my face. And yet the cow-bird 
finds this nest and drops her parasitical egg 
im it. Her tactics in this as in other cases are 
probably to watch the movements of the 
parent bird. She may often be seen searching 
anxiously through the trees or bushes for a 
suitable nest, yet she may still oftener be seen 
perched upon some good point of observation 
watching the birds as they come and go 
about her. There is no doubt that, in many 
cases, the cow-bird makes room for her own 
illegitimate egg in the nest by removing one 
of the bird’s own. A lady, living in the sub- 
urbs of an eastern city, one morning heard 
cries of distress from a pair of house-wrens 
that had a nest in a honeysuckle on her front 
porch. On looking out of the window, she 
beheld this little comedy— comedy from her 
point of view, but no doubt grim tragedy from 
the point of view of the wrens: a cow-bird 
with a wren’s egg in its beak running rapidly 
along the walk, with the outraged wrens 
forming a procession behind it, screaming, 
scolding, and gesticulating as only these 
voluble little birds can. The cow-bird had 
probably been surprised in the act of viola- 
ting the nest, and the wrens were giving her 
a piece of their minds. 
Every cow-bird is reared at the expense of 
two or more song-birds. For every one of 
these dusky little pedestrians there amid the 
grazing cattle there are two or more spar- 
rows, Or vireos, or warblers, the less. Itis a big 
price to pay—two larks for a bunting —two 
sovereigns for a shilling ; but nature does not 
hesitate occasionally to contradict herself in 
just this way. 
I noted but two warblers’ nests the past 
season, one of the black-throated blue-back 
and one of the redstart,—the latter built in 
an apple-tree but a few yards from a little 
rustic summer-house where I idle away many 
summer days. The lively little birds, darting: 
and flashing about, attracted my attention 
for a week before I discovered their nest. 
They probably built it by working early in the 
morning, before I appeared upon the scene, 
as I never saw them with material in their 
beaks. Guessing from their movements that 
the nest was in a large maple that stood near 
by, I climbed the tree and explored it thor- 
oughly, looking especially in the forks of the 
branches, as the authorities say these birds 
build in a fork. But no nest could I find. 
Indeed, how can one by searching find a 
bird’s nest? I overshot the mark; the nest 
was much nearer me, almost under my very 
nose, and I discovered it, not by searching, 
