ch a dainty Quaker lady as she want of
horsehair?--but she kept tight hold of one of the feathers, although it
was almost as big as she was; and flew back quickly to the nest with it.

This performance proved one point. She would not take everything that
was brought to her. She preferred to hunt for her own materials rather
than use what she did not like. Now the question was, what did she like?

My next experiment was with some lamp wick to which I had tied bits of
cotton. The titmouse took the cotton and would have taken the wicking, I
think, if it had not been fastened in too tight for her. After that I
tried tying bits of cotton to strings, and letting them dangle before
the mouth of the nest. Though I moved up to within twenty feet of the
nest, she paid no attention to me but hurried in. She liked the cotton
so well she stopped in her hallway, reached up to pull at the white
bundles, and tweaked and tugged till, finally, she backed triumphantly
down the hole with one.

Her mate, less familiar with my experiments, started to go to the nest
after her, but the sight of the cotton scared him so he fled
ignominiously back into the treetop. He stayed there singing till she
came out, when he flew up to her with a dainty he had discovered--at
least the two put their bills together; perhaps it was just a caress,
for they were a tender, gentle little pair.

Having proved that my bird liked feathers and cotton, I wanted to see
what she thought of straws. Apparently she did not think much of them.
She looked very much dashed when she came home and found the yellow
sticks protruding from the nest hole. She hesitated, turned her head
over, flew to a twig on one side of the oak and then back to one on the
other side. Finally she mustered courage, and with her crest flattened
as if she did not like it, darted down into the hole. When she flew out,
however, she went right to her mate, and forgetting all her troubles at
sight of him, fluttered her wings and lisped like a young bird as she
put up her bill to have him feed her.

Perhaps it was unkind to bother the poor bird any more, but I meant her
no harm and the fever for experiment possessed my blood. I tied some of
the straws to a piece of wicking and baited it with feathers, thinking
that perhaps she would take the straws for the sake of the feathers and
wicking. I also stuffed the hole with horsehair. She did pull at the
feather end of the line; I saw the straw jerk, and, w