ill prefers to build near
the house, where hawks and crows and owls rarely come. She knows her
friends and takes advantage of their protection, returning year after
year to the same old elm, and, like a thrifty little housewife,
carefully saving and sorting the good threads of her storm-wrecked old
house to be used in building the new.

Of late years, however, it has seemed to me that the pretty nests on
the secluded streets of New England towns are growing scarcer. The
orioles are peace-loving birds, and dislike the society of those
noisy, pugnacious little rascals, the English sparrows, which have of
late taken possession of our streets. Often now I find the nests far
away from any house, on lonely roads where a few years ago they were
rarely seen. Sometimes also a solitary farmhouse, too far from the
town to be much visited by sparrows, has two or three nests swinging
about it in its old elms, where formerly there was but one.

It is an interesting evidence of the bird's keen instinct that where
nests are built on lonely roads and away from houses they are
noticeably deeper, and so better protected from bird enemies. The same
thing is sometimes noticed of nests built in maple or apple trees,
which are without the protection of drooping branches, upon which
birds of prey can find no footing. Some wise birds secure the same
protection by simply contracting the neck of the nest, instead of
building a deep one. Young birds building their first nests seem
afraid to trust in the strength of their own weaving. Their nests are
invariably shallow, and so suffer most from birds of prey.

In the choice of building material the birds are very careful. They
know well that no branch supports the nest from beneath; that the
safety of the young orioles depends on good, strong material well
woven together. In some wise way they seem to know at a glance whether
a thread is strong enough to be trusted; but sometimes, in selecting
the first threads that are to bear the whole weight of the nest, they
are unwilling to trust to appearances. At such times a pair of birds
may be seen holding a little tug-of-war, with feet braced, shaking and
pulling the thread like a pair of terriers, till it is well tested.

It is in gathering and testing the materials for a nest that the
orioles display no little ingenuity. One day, a few years ago, I was
lying under some shrubs, watching a pair of the birds that were
building close to the house. It wa