sooty chimneys in which the young
chimney swifts break from their snow-white eggs and twitter for food. How
impatiently they must look up at the blue sky, and one would think that
they must long for the time when they can spread their sickle-shaped wings
and dash about from dawn to dark! Is it not wonderful that one of them
should live to grow up when we think of the fragile little cup which is
their home?--a mosaic of delicate twigs held together only by the sticky
saliva of the parent birds.

A relation of theirs--though we should never guess it--is sitting upon her
tiny air castle high up in an apple tree not far away,--a ruby-throated
hummingbird. If we take a peep into the nest when the young hummingbirds
are only partly grown, we shall see that their bills are broad and stubby,
like those of the swifts. Their home, however, is indeed a different
affair,--a pinch of plant-down tied together with cobwebs and stuccoed
with lichens, like those which are growing all about upon the tree. If we
do not watch the female when she settles to her young or eggs we may
search in vain for this tiniest of homes, so closely does it resemble an
ordinary knot on a branch.

The flycatchers are well represented in the Park, there being no fewer
than five species; the least flycatcher, wood pewee, phoebe, crested
flycatcher, and kingbird. The first two prefer the woods, the phoebe
generally selects a mossy rock or a bridge beam, the fourth nests in a
hollow tree and often decorates its home with a snake-skin. The kingbird
builds an untidy nest in an apple tree. Our American crow is, of course, a
member of this little community of birds, and that in spite of
persecution, for in the spring one or two are apt to contract a taste for
young ducklings and hence have to be put out of the way. The fish crow, a
smaller cousin of the big black fellow, also nests here, easily known by
his shriller, higher caw. A single pair of blue jays nest in the Park, but
the English starling occupies every box which is put up and bids fair to
be as great or a greater nuisance than the sparrow. It is a handsome bird
and a fine whistler, but when we remember how this foreigner is slowly but
surely elbowing our native birds out of their rightful haunts, we find
ourselves losing sight of its beauties. The cowbird, of course, imposes
her eggs upon many of the smaller species of birds, while our beautiful
purple grackle, meadow lark, red-winged blackbird, and the B