The Sedalia weekly bazoo. [volume] (Sedalia, Mo.) 187?-1904, 1889-01-22
BIRDS AND NESTS.
Habits Of Some Of the Feathered
Tribes Of England.

I'LL seat committeth himself to prison"
IL you are an observer of nature, a
hundred little Incidents, particularly
In relation to bird life, will bring this
truthful adage home to your mind; for
you ca1 not Fill 20 c!acTTber how, in
the deep woods. .Eoa have found
wrecked eggs on the ground. These
have fallen from an insecurity built
nest.
/ have seen nests so tossed by a
passing wind, when yet there are no
leaves upon the trees, that birds have
had to forsake them because, being in
securely fastened, they had yielded,
and lay upon their sides. Birds do not
understand the art of patching up their
nests as human beings do their houses,
but begin at once to build a new home
the moment the old one gives way.
The pigeon is to the sparrow what
the country pumpkin is to the London
street Arab. You will rarely find our
sparrows making any mistakes about
the safety of their nests. They even
protect themselves from the cats,
whose sure-footedness on the tiles and
cutters make them dangerous enemies.
Two or three examples of the spar
rows instinct that have come within
my knowledge are interesting. Over
one of the houses in the Strand, dec
Grating the front, is a plaster mask,
the eyes being absent. Waiting for
an omnibus few days since, / noticed
a sparrow carrying a very long straw,
and, marking its flight l tracked him
to the mask. / saw him vanish
through the eye-hole and the
straw was gradually drawn
within. Ho! no! said |, you are build
ing your nest in that head. And so it
was; for, having duly placed his straw,
he emerged, and, having had a good
self-satisfied look around, he went in
search of other materials. In the
half-hour / watched him he must have
made at least ten expeditions, and the
cleverness in carrying materials and
afterwards leaving no trace outside
the mask was remarkable.
/ once found a sparrow in very
peculiar home, in no other place than
in the hand of the great equestrian
statue of the Duke of Wellington that
used to be al Hyde Park Corner.
When the workmen were taking this
statue to pieces, preparatory to its re-
moval to Aldershot, / had an oppor-
:tunity of going all over it; in fact, |
was inside, having found ingress
Through the collar of the Dukes
tunic, his head having been removed.
The right hand of the Duke held a
Field Marshal's baton; it also held in
the palm a sparrow's nest with several
eggs in il. OF course the wOrkmen,
by their presence and hammering at
the metal, kept the father and mother
away during the day and so destroyed
the chance of the eggs incubation.
Of all birds the chaffinch probably
shows most knowledge of hiding his
nest by matching the color of its sur
roundings If he selects an old plum
tree, he builds his nest with gray
lichen to suit the moss on the tree.
If in green wooded rosebush, he will
build his nest with fine green moss; in
every case he chooses a moss which is
nearest in color to that of the bark of
the trees he selects to build in. The
chaffinch in his wild state is a lonely
bird, with his pipe song full of sadness:
"Sweet, sweet. Oh, will you not come
to me? Sweet, sweet, sweet. / love
you"
The hawthorn, or may, when its
buds are shooting, is the home of the
hedge sparrow. whose tiny eggs of
beautiful blue are miniature of the
singing thrush's eggs. 1t is mistake
TO think that this poor innocent bird is
the only victim of the cuckoo, who is
the herald of spring, even before the
lark, upon our southern coasts, for /
have found the young cuckoo in the
titlark's nest. and once in gray lin
nets nest in beech hedge. The
titlark's nest found in the long grass
at the root Of furze bush, showing
that the cuckoo sometimes lays her
eggs upon the ground.
In the alder tree we find the gold
finch, with its tiny nest of tree lichen
and lined COW hair, which the birds
have been seen taking off the backs of
cattle. The nest can hardly be dis
tinguished from the gray wrinkled
branches of the alder; but the bird it
self will be a signal to a sharp eye and
ear, for there is hardly its equal in
plaintive crying when its nest or off
spring are approached.
The yellowhammer loves the brier,
where rough hands viii be punished
by the thorns. It's nests are formed