stalks of dry grass and a few long hairs
from a cow's tail, loosely arranged on the branch of an apple-tree.
The rough-winged swallow builds in the wall and in old stone heaps,
and I have seen the robin build in similar localities. Others have
found its nest in old, abandoned wells. The house wren will build in
anything that has an accessible cavity, from an old boot to a
bombshell. A pair of them once persisted in building their nest in the
top of a certain pump-tree, getting in through the opening above the
handle. The pump being in daily use, the nest was destroyed more than
a score of times. This jealous little wretch has the wise forethought,
when the box in which he builds contains two compartments, to fill up
one of them, so as to avoid the risk of troublesome neighbors.

The less skilful builders sometimes depart from their usual habit, and
take up with the abandoned nest of some other species. The blue-jay
now and then lays in an old crow's-nest or cuckoo's-nest. The
crow-blackbird, seized with a fit of indolence, drops its eggs in the
cavity of a decayed branch. I heard of a cuckoo that dispossessed a
robin of its nest; of another that set a blue-jay adrift. Large, loose
structures, like the nests of the osprey and certain of the herons,
have been found with half a dozen nests of the blackbird set in the
outer edges, like so many parasites, or, as Audubon says, like the
retainers about the rude court of a feudal baron.

[Illustration: BALTIMORE ORIOLE AND NEST.]

The same birds breeding in a southern climate construct far less
elaborate nests than when breeding in a northern climate. Certain
species of water-fowl that abandon their eggs to the sand and the sun
in the warmer zones, build a nest and sit in the usual way in
Labrador. In Georgia, the Baltimore oriole places its nest upon the
north side of the tree; in the Middle and Eastern States, it fixes it
upon the south or east side, and makes it much thicker and Warner. I
have seen one from the South that had some kind-of coarse reed or
sedge woven into it, giving it an open-work appearance, like a
basket.

Very few species use the same material uniformly. I have seen the nest
of the robin quite destitute of mud. In one instance, it was composed
mainly of long, black horse-hairs, arranged in a circular manner, with
a lining of fine yellow grass; the whole presenting quite a novel
appearance. In another case, the nest was chiefly constructed of a
specie