INTRODUCTORY CHAPTERS.

a nest, unless it follows the pattern of a Robin’s or Sparrow’s. I asked him one day if there were many kinds of nests in his neighbourhood. “Wall,” he said, leaning on his axe (for it was the wood-chopping season) and giving a reminiscent gaze through the brush, “there’s plenty 0’ birds, but, bless yer, not half on ’em makes any reg’lar sort 0’ nests. Sparrers and Robins does, an’ Catbirds an’ Crows; but Swallers ony makes mud-pies, an’ Humbirds jest sets down right where- ever they see a round 0’ moss on a branch, and the warmth 0’ them makes the moss grow up a bit, but I don’t call that a nest. The Hangbird (Oriole) he strings up a bag in a tree, an’ them Red-eyed Warblers (Vireos) hooks a mess o’ scraps in a twig fork, but those ain’t real nests: an’ tree- mice (Nuthatches) don’t have none at all, jest stuffs a few feathers in a hole, I seen one to—day;” and after turning over his wood he produced an upright branch containing the feather-lined bed of the VVhite—breasted Nuthatch.

Spend a mouth on the bird»quest, or a week even, and your eyes Will be opened to the possibilities, and you will become alive to the fact, that the feathered race has its artisans the same as the human brotherhood. Weavers whose looms antedate all man’s inventions masons, car< penters, frescoers, decorators, and upholsterers, its skilled mechanics, and shiftless, unskilled labourers, and its para- sitic tramps, who house their young at the expense of others. As for varied materials,—hay, sticks, feathers, hair, moss, bark, fur, hog-bristles, dandelion-down, mud, catkins, seed- pods, lichens, paper, rags, yarn, and snake skins, are only a part of the bird architect’s list of usable things.

You must not hope to identify all the nests possible to your locality in a single season, or even in three or four, but be always on the watch. If you fail to see the birds build, which is the easiest and surest way of knowing the nest, when the autumn comes and the leaves fall away many nests will be revealed in places where you never thought they existed, and you will learn where to look another season. If these nests are of marked types, you can iden- tify them even in the autumn, and it will give you a new

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