ern 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, but no doubt grim-tragedy from the point of view
of the wrens; a cow-bird with a wren's egg in its beak running rapidly
along the walk with the outraged wrens forming a procession behind it,
screaming, scolding, and gesticulating as only these voluble little
birds can. The cow-bird had probably been surprised in the act of
violating the nest, and the wrens were giving her a piece of theirs
minds.

Every cow-bird is reared at the expense of two or more song-birds.
For every one of these dusky little pedestrians there amid the grazing
cattle there are two more sparrows, or vireos, or warblers, the less.
It is a big price to pay--two larks for a bunting-two sovereigns for
a shilling; but Nature does not hesitate occasionally to
contradict herself in just this way. The young of the cow-bird is
disproportionately large and aggressive, one might say hoggish.
When disturbed it will clasp the nest and scream, and snap its beak
threateningly. One hatched out in a song-sparrow's nest which was under
my observation, and would soon have overridden and overborne the young
sparrow, which came out of the shell a few hours later, had I not
interfered from time to time and lent the young sparrow a helping hand.
Every day I would visit the nest and take the sparrow out from under the
pot-bellied interloper and place it on top so that presently it was able
to hold its own against its enemy. Both birds became fledged and left
the nest about the same time. Whether the race was an even one after
that, I know not.

I noted but two warblers' nests during that season, one of the
black-throated blue-back and one of the redstart,--the latter built in
an apple-tree but a few yards from a little rustic summer-house where
I idle away many summer days. The lively little birds, darting and
flashing about, attracted my attention for a week before I discovered
their nest. They probably built it by working early in the morning,
before I appeared upon the scene, as I never saw them with material in
their beaks. Guessing from their movements that the nest was in a large
maple that stood near by, I climbed the tree and explored it thoroughly,
looking especially in the forks of the branches, as the authorities say
these birds build in a fork.