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Twice I have seen cedar-birds, in their quest for nesting-material, trying to carry away the strings that orioles had attached to branches. According to our sentimental "School of Nature Study," the birds should have untied and unsnarled the strings in a human way, but they did not; they simply tugged at them, bringing their weight to bear, and tried to fly away with the loose end.
When the nest-building actually began, the birds were so shy about it that, watch as I might, I failed to catch them in the act. One morning I saw the mother bird in the garden with nesting-material in her beak, but she failed to come to the honeysuckle with it while I watched from a near-by covert.
In the choice of nesting-material the swift shows no change of habit. She still snips off the small dry twigs from the tree-tops and glues them together, and to the side of the chimney, with her own glue. The soot is a new obstacle in her way, that she does not yet seem to have learned to overcome, as the rains often loosen it and cause her nest to fall to the bottom.
And the wren, the irrepressible house wren, was and is in evidence every few minutes, busy carrying nesting-material into the box on the corner of the veranda. How intense and emphatic she is! And the male, how he throbs and palpitates with song! Yesterday an interloper appeared.
I have never known any of our wild birds to steal the nesting-material of another bird of the same kind, but I have known birds to try to carry off the material belonging to other species. But usually the rule of might is the rule of right among the animals.
Sitting in my barn-door study I see a vesper sparrow fly up and alight on the telephone wire with nesting-material in her beak. I keep my eye upon her. In a moment she drops down to the grassy and weedy bank of the roadside in front of me and disappears. A few moments later I have her secret a nest in a little recess in the bank. That straw gave the finishing touch.
One spring a pair of English sparrows tried to build a nest on the plate that upholds the roof of my porch. They were apparently attracted by an opening about an inch wide in the top of the plate, that ran the whole length of it. The pair were busy nearly the whole month of April in carrying nesting-material to various points on that plate.
The hummer makes short work of everything: with a flash and a hum it is gone. This one seemed to be exploring the dry twigs for nesting-material, either spiders' webs or bits of lichen. For a brief moment it perched on a twig a few yards from me. My ardent wish could not hold it any longer.
The swallow does perch now and then and descend to the ground for nesting-material; but the swift, I have reason to believe, even outrides the summer storms, facing them on steady wing, high in air. The twigs for her nest she gathers on the wing, sweeping along like children on a "merry-go-round" who try to seize a ring, or to do some other feat, as they pass a given point.
The birds could not effect an entrance into the interior of the plate, but they could thrust in their nesting-material, and so they persisted week after week, stimulated by the presence of a cavity beyond their reach. The case is a good illustration of the blind working of instinct.
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