the nest would be screened from him by the large leaf that usually
forms a canopy immediately 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 concealed.
The last one I saw was a pendent from the end of a low branch of a
maple, that nearly grazed the clapboards of an unused 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 in
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. When the cow-bird
finds two or more eggs in a nest in which she wishes to deposit her
own, she will remove one of them. I found a sparrow's nest with two
sparrow's eggs and one cow-bird's egg, another egg lying a foot or so
below it on the ground. I replaced the ejected egg, and the next day
found it again removed, and another cow-bird's egg in its place;
I put it back the second time, when it was again ejected, or destroyed,
for I failed to find it anywhere. Very alert and sensitive birds like
the warblers often bury the strange egg beneath a second nest built on
top of the old. A lady, living in the suburbs 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,