th flaxen fibres of plants and wool. Around the
base a few bits of hornets' nests, mosses, and lichens are loosely
fastened. The nest within is furnished with fine stems and needles, the
flooring very thin and slight.

The bird is shy when started from the nest, and has a sharp chipping
alarm-note common to the family.

The Cerulean Warbler is found in the Eastern States, but is more
numerous west of the Allegheny mountains, and throughout the heavily
wooded districts of the Mississippi valley. In winter it migrates to
Central America and Cuba. The Warblers are of unfailing interest to the
lover of bird life. Apart from the beauty of the birds themselves, with
their perpetually contrasting colors among the green leaves, their
pretty ways furnish to the silent watcher an ever changing spectacle of
the innocent life in the tree-tops.

[Illustration: From col. Fred. Kaempfer.
WILD TURKEY.
Copyrighted by
Nature Study Pub. Co., 1897, Chicago.]

[Illustration: From col. F. M. Woodruff.
CERULEAN WARBLER.
Copyrighted by
Nature Study Pub. Co., 1897, Chicago.]

THE WILD TURKEY.

I thought my picture would appear in this number of BIRDS. What would
Thanksgiving be without a Turkey, I'd like to know.

The editor says that I am a bird of ex-tra-or-di-na-ry size and beauty.
That word is as big as I am, but by spelling it, I guess you will
understand.

I look as proud as a peacock, don't I? Well, I am just as proud. You
ought to see me strut, and hear me talk when the hen-turkeys are around.
Why, sometimes when there is a large troop of us in the woods you can
hear us _gobble, gobble, gobble_, for many miles. We are so fond of
talking to each other.

That is when we are about to set up housekeeping, you think.

Yes, in March and April. After the nests are made, and the little
turkeys hatched out, we big, handsome fellows go off by ourselves. The
hen-turkeys, with their young broods, do the same.

Sometimes there are as many as a hundred in our troop and seventy or
eighty in theirs. We travel on foot, picking up food as we go, till we
meet a man with a gun, or come to a wide river.

Then we have to fly.

In a flock? Oh, yes. We choose some high place from which to get a good
start. There we all stay, sometimes a day or two, strutting about and
talking big. It is _gobble, gobble gobble_, from morning t