1860. | 
worms or caterpillars. On this soft 
lining the female deposits six white 
eggs. 
I recently discovered one of these 
nests in a most interesting situation. 
The tree containing it, a variety of the 
wild-cherry, stood upon the brink of the 
bald summit of a high mountain. Gray, 
time-worn rocks lay piled loosely about, 
or overtoppled the just visible by-ways 
of the red fox. The trees had a half- 
scared look, and that indescribable wild- 
ness which lurks about the tops of all 
remote mountains possessed the place. 
Standing there, I looked down upon the 
back of the red-tailed hawk as he flew 
out over the earth beneath me. Fol- 
lowing him, my eye algo took in farms 
and settlements and villages and other 
mountain ranges that grew blue in the 
distance. 
The parent birds attracted my atten- 
tion by appearing with food in their 
‘beaks, and by seeming much put out. 
Yet so wary were they of revealing the 
locality of their brood, or even of the pre- 
cise tree that held them, that I lurked 
around over an hour without gaining a 
point on them. Finally a bright and 
curious boy who accompanied me se- 
creted himself under a low, projecting 
rock close to the tree in which we sup- 
posed the nest to be, while I moved off 
around the mountain-side. It was not 
long before the youth had their secret. 
The tree, which was low and wide, 
branching, and overrun with lichens, 
appeared at a cursory glance to contain 
not one dry or decayed limb. Yet there 
was one a few feet long, in which, when 
my eyes were piloted thither, I detected 
a small round orifice. 
As my weight began to shake the 
branches, the consternation of both old 
and young was great. The stump of 
a limb that held the nest was about 
three inches thick, and at the bottom 
of the tunnel was excavated quite to 
the bark. With my thumb I broke in 
the thin wall, and the young, which 
were full-fledged, looked out upon 
the world for the first time. Pres- 
ently one of them, with a significant 
chirp, as much as to say, “It is time 
Bird’ s-Nests. 
795 
we were out of this,” began to climb up 
toward the proper entrance. Placing 
himself in the hole, he looked around 
without manifesting any surprise at the 
grand scene that lay spread out before 
him. He was taking his bearings, and 
determining how far he could trust the 
power of his untried wings to take him 
out of harm’s way. After a moment’s 
pause, with a loud chirrup, he launched 
out and made tolerable headway. The 
others rapidly followed. Each one, as 
it started upward, from a sudden im- 
pulse, contemptuously saluted the aban- 
doned nest with its excrement. 
Though generally regular in their 
habits and instincts, yet the birds some- 
times seem as whimsical and capricious 
as superior beings. One is not safe, for 
instance, in making any absolute asser- 
tion as to their place or mode of build- 
ing. Ground builders often get up into 
a bush, and tree builders sometimes get 
upon the ground or into a tussock of 
grass. The song sparrow, which is a 
ground builder, has been known to build 
in the knot-hole of a fence rail, and a 
chimney swallow once got tired of soot 
and smoke, and fastened its nest ona 
rafter in a hay barn. A friend tells me 
of a pair of barn swallows which, tak- 
ing a fanciful turn, saddled their nest 
in the loop of a rope that was pendent 
from a peg in the peak, and liked it so 
well that they repeated the experiment 
next year. I have known the social 
sparrow, or “hair-bird,” to build under 
a shed, in a tuft of hay that hung down, 
through the loose flooring, from the 
mow above. It usually contents itself 
with half a dozen stalks of dry grass 
and a few long hairs from a cow’s tail, 
loosely arranged on the branch of an 
apple-tree. The reugh-winged swallow 
builds in the wall and in old stone 
heaps, and I have seen the robin build 
in similar localities. Others have found 
its nest in old, abandoned wells. The 
house wren will build in anything that 
has an accessible cavity, from an old 
boot to a bombshell. A pair of them 
once persisted in building their nest 
in the top of a certain pump-tree, get- 
ting in through the opening above the 
