THE BUILDING OF THE NEST.
interest in the waning season; something to look for in the naked woods, a motive for winter walks. Though many of the frailer structures melt away or are torn down by high winds, the more carefully woven ones often remain over the winter.
On looking out one morning last January, after a night when a light, thawing snow had been followed by a sharp freeze, I was surprised and fascinated by the appearance of an Oriole's nest which hung from an elm near the house, and which had been invisible before. Its gray pocket was brimful of soft snow, which was oozing out of the top like foam, while the outside was coated with thin ice, which accentuated the woven strands and hung down in fantastic icicles scintillating in the sun.
Another winter day I was attracted by seeing a field-mouse run from a tuft of grass at the root of a small bush, and I found there a nest, presumably that of a Song Spar-row, containing two Sparrow eggs and one belonging to the Cowbird. The nest had evidently been abandoned on account of the alien egg, and it made a convenient hiding-place for the mouse, who had nibbled at the eggs and found their contents dried away. In the autumn and winter you may appropriate the nests you find, and examine and pull them apart with a freedom which, if indulged in during the spring or early summer, would give many a bird the heartache and an added distrust of bipeds.
Do you remember the January entry in Thoreau's journal? "Another bright winter's day, to the woods to see what birds' nests are made of."
Now if you are interested, awake, and clear-eyed, go out as I have said, and I will lead you, figuratively, telling you what you may find as a foretaste. Begin near at home; go through the garden first, them to the nearest field and the bit of marsh-bordered wood. Do not go further than where you may walk without ceremony or fuss. Never make a laborious tour of the bird-quest, or think that you must live in a tent remote from people, in order to name the majority of our every-day birds.
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