phoebe 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
superstructure upon the old as a foundation. I have heard of a white
robin--an albino--that nested several years in succession in the suburbs
of a Maryland city. A sparrow with a very marked peculiarity of song I
have heard several seasons 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 bloodthirsty animals, 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. Not a 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 during the day.
Infancy, we say, is hedged about by many perils; but the infancy of
birds is cradled and pillowed in peril. An old Michigan settler told
me that the first six children that were born to him died; malaria and
teething invariably carried them off when they had reached a certain
age; but other children were born, the country improved, and by and by
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 a few species have the
heart and strength to make even the third trial.

The first nest-builders in spring, like the first settlers near hostile
tribes, suffer the most casualties. A large portion of the nests of
April and May are destroyed; their enemies have