[Footnote 1: A recent English writer upon this subject presents
an array of facts and considerations that do not support this
view. He says that, with very few exceptions, it is the rule
that, when both sexes are of strikingly gay and conspicuous
colors, the nest is such as to conceal the sitting bird; while,
whenever there is a striking contrast of colors, the male being
gay and conspicuous, the female dull and obscure, the nest is
open and the sitting bird exposed to view. The exceptions to
this rule among European birds appear to be very few. Among our
own birds, the cuckoos and blue jays build open nests, without
presenting any noticeable difference in the coloring of the two
sexes. The same is true of the pewees, the kingbird, and the
sparrows, while the common bluebird, the oriole, and orchard
starling afford examples the other way.]

In migrating northward, the males precede the females by eight or
ten days; returning in the fall, the females and young precede the
males by about the same time.

After the woodpeckers 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 it 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 the wild cherry,
stood upon the brink of the bald summit of a high mountain. Gray,
time-worn 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 al