The Universalist. [volume] (Chicago [Ill.]) 1884-1897, 1895-05-25
Our Special Contributors---IS05.
NESTING TIME.
A Glimpse of Tree Top Country.
~ By OLIVE THoRNE MILLER. TX
1000 900
Hard is his heart that loveth naught

THERE is always something going
on out OF doors worth looking at,
SAYS Charles Dudley Warner, and
this is emphatically true in the time
of wooing and home making; when
every bush and tree may hold its
sweet secret; when little hearts full
of love and Joy overflow in ecstatlc
song; when small forms are every
where fitting about, selecting sites
for homes, busily hunting up materi-
al, or forming the same into the Wind
rocked cradle that shall hold their
treasures,
Never is bird life more charming
to study than in these days of early
summer, and nothing can be more
bewitching than the coy manners of
he little builders, and the musical
rhapsodies of their enchanted lovers.
See the pair searching for the exact
spot that shall be safest and best in
every way for their darlings. The
small dame leading, with her gaily
dressed mate in attendance, ready to
proclaim her the "wisest, discreetest,
best" and her selection the most de-
sirable nook on earth; she on bust
ness thoughts intent, he full of antics
and song.
Note, too, although safety is pro-
minently in the thoughts of all birds,
the different ways in which they aim
to secure it. To conceal the precious
spot from the eyes of man and beast
is the idea of the bobolink, who
chooses the middle of meadow
where tall grass shall cover, and sinks
her tiny cup to its brim in the soft
earth. The same desire to hide gov
erns the night hawk, who places her
dirt colored eggs among the pebbles
of stony hillside, and the whippoor-
will, whose queer wide mouthed
babies are Graded on bed of leaves
in the woods.
The horned lark who haunts the
sandy plains of the West, gives to
her little ones the concealment of the
vast desert. scorning the labor ofnest
making, and depending alone upon
the insignifcance of her treasures to
escape notice. Wisely, too, for they
are so hidden by their very openness
that it is wonder how the mother
can find them herself.
To hide is also the aim of the hum
ming bird, who places her gem of a
homestead on branch, and covers it
carefully with bits of lichen till it
perfectly resemble a natural knot or
excrescence of thu limb. And the
same is true of the warbler, who
tucks her tiny cradle into tuft of
leaves high up in
tree. Daintiest of all hidden nests is
that of the daintiest of this fairy-like
family, the Parula warbler, whose
hammock is in a tuft of hanging moss
such as grows on old trees, left on
the outside as Nature made it, but
with fibers drawn together inside,
just enough to form safe platform
for eggs and minute nestlings.
Concealment is not so much the
thought of the woodpeckers as Sc
curity, safe and inaccessible situa-
tions. Their wooden castles are
hewn out in the hearts of trees, dead
or living, generally too high for
ground providers, and with an en-
trance too small for birds of prey.
They are probably the safest nests.
and woodpecker babies do not need
the lesson of caution many birdlings
must learn in the cradle. They are
the most vociferous of feathered little
folk, and they stay patiently at home
till fully plumed and ready for fight.
Security, too, is the notion Of the
sea birds, who choose unapproachable
cliffs on barren islands, where in large
communities they bring up their
broad winged babies to their life over
the ocean. The same feeling sends
another bird, the horned putin, into
deep clefts in rocks, where neither
man nor beast can reach them, and
from whence come such sounds of
scolding, screaming and growing,
that the thought is suggested that
perhaps it was the necessity for
spot out of reach that taught this
particular AUX where to make her
nest. But before we set this family
down as vulgar brawlers, We must re-
member that the language we hear may
be merely ordinary pufine Sc, and the
birds only voluble, not quarrelsome.
Hardly less secure than these is the
home laboriously excavated by the
k:ngfsher, at the erd of long pas
sage, reaching far underground from
a river bank, where the little blue
beauties repose on beds of fish bones,