II. Bird Nests and Babies
One spring the doctor got all ready to put a new roof on the kitchen wing of the house. Mrs. Doctor said it leaked ter-ri-bly every time it rained. The carpenter came one Monday, early in April. But on the Saturday before, Mr. and Mrs, Jennie Wren had moved in under a broken shingle. They flew at that man. They told him just what they thought of him for trying to break up their housekeeping. The doctor laughed and told the man to go away, and not to come back until the wren babies were out of the nest.
A hat full of trash was taken out of that hole! There were twigs, grass, leaves, strings, rags and shavings, all laid loosely in a cup, and lined with feathers from the chicken yard. The wrens are fond of building, and any sort of a hole suits them. They will use an old shoe or a tin can. This pair built a second nest in the pocket of an old coat the doctor had hung up in a shed. If you nail some tin cans or cigar boxes up any where near the house, for nests, you can always have wrens living near you. In a wren's nest are laid as many as six flesh-colored eggs, spotted with tawny pink.
Of all the birds in the garden, the orioles made the finest nests, putting into them days of skilled labor. Orioles are weavers. The Baltimore oriole weaves a hanging purse of a nest, on the highest limb and the farthest twig of an elm tree. Sober little olive-and-yellow Mama Oriole is the artist. Gay orange-and-black Papa Oriole is merely the hod carrier. He gathers long blades of dry grass, strands of bark from grape vines and milk-weed, strings, wool, hair, thread and feathers. He has to find all these things, one at a time, and carry them up to the limb, that may be fifty feet in the air. Then he sits near his little mate and sings to her. He tells her how much he loves her, and how clever she is. He brags that no squirrel can run out to that nest, or cowbird lay an egg in it, or hawk get to the bottom of it. She works quietly and steadily, and sings her pretty alto with him, sweetly.
First she takes the longest, strongest bits and ties both ends to the twig. She ties hard knots, using her bill to pull the ends through tight. She does this until she has a number of loops, as deep as she wants the nest, for the warp, or up-and-down threads. Then she begins to weave in and out, taking a thread in her bill
