m as effectually, no doubt as they do the
professional ooelogist. 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 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 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 east