wo sexes. The same is true of
the pewees, the kingbird, and the sparrows, while
the common bluebird, the oriole, and the orchard
starling afford examples the other way.

In migrating northward, the males have abandoned their nests, or
rather chambers, which they do after the first season, their cousins,
the nuthatches, chickadees, and brown creepers, fall heir to them.
These birds, especially the creepers and nuthatches, have many of the
habits of the Picidae, but lack their powers of bill, and so are
unable to excavate a nest for themselves. Their habitation, therefore,
is always second-hand. But each species carries in some soft material
of various kinds, or in other words, furnishes the tenement to its
liking. The chickadee arranges in the bottom of the cavity a little
mat of a light felt-like substance, which looks as if is came from the
hatter's, but which is probably the work of numerous worms or
caterpillars. On this soft lining the female deposits six speckled
eggs.

I recently discovered one of these nests in a most interesting
situation. The tree containing it, a variety of wild cherry, stood
upon the brink of the bald summit of a high mountain. Gray, timeworn
rocks lay piled loosely about, or overtoppled the just visible byways
of the red fox. The trees had a half-scared look, and that
indescribable wildness which lurks about the tops of all remote
mountains possessed the place. Standing there, I looked down upon the
back of the red-tailed hawk as he flew out over the earth beneath me.
Following him, my eye also took in farms and settlements and villages
and other mountain ranges that grew blue in the distance.

The parent birds attracted my attention by appearing with food in
their beaks, and by seeming much put out. Yet so wary were they of
revealing the locality of their brood, or even of the precise tree
that held them, that I lurked around over an hour without gaining a
point on them. Finally a bright and curious boy who accompanied me
secreted himself under a low, projected rock close to the tree in
which we supposed the nest to be, while I moved off around the
mountain-side. It was not long before the youth had their secret. The
tree which was low and wide-branching, and overrun with lichens,
appeared at a cursory glance to contain not one dry or decayed limb.
Yet there was one a few feet long, in which, when my eyes were piloted
thither, I detected a small round orifice.

As my weig