Birds Illustrated by Color Photography, Vol 3. No 6, June 1898

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Various. Birds Illustrated by Color Photography, Vol 3. No 6, June 1898

JUNE

OUR NEIGHBOR

BIRDS' NESTS

BRÜNNICH'S MURRE

THE CANADA GOOSE

THE CANADA GOOSE

THE BROWN CREEPER

THE BROWN CREEPER

THE DOWNY WOODPECKER

THE DOWNY WOODPECKER

THE NEW TENANTS

THE OLD SQUAW DUCK

THE WHITE-FACED GLOSSY IBIS

SOME LOVERS OF NATURE

THE ARKANSAS KINGBIRD

QUEER RELATIONS

ONE AUDUBON SOCIETY

THE YOUTH OF BUDDHA

SUMMARY

Отрывок из книги

THE nest of the mourning dove. – The nest of the Carolina or Mourning Dove, which authorities place on the horizontal limb of a tree, is not always found in this situation, as I can testify. Last year, while wandering in early May through a piece of low woodland in Amherst, Mass., my eye was caught by a pair of well-grown youngsters covered with bluish pin feathers. The nest containing them – a loose affair of small sticks and leaves – was placed on the ground, or rather on the decayed base of a stump, surrounded by a ring of second-growth birches. Immediately suspecting their identity, I merged myself in the landscape after the manner of bird-lovers, and was soon rewarded by a sight of the parent Doves, who came sweeping down from a neighboring tree, uttering their pensive call-note. The pair had been frequent visitors about the lawn and drive-way for a few weeks previous.

I have heard of another similar instance of ground-nesting on the part of Wild Doves.

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It has been said that "a Wren will build in anything from a bootleg to a bomb-shell." And this seems to be so. Many an urchin can testify to having found the neat nest of the Wren in his cast-off shoe or a tin can, and nests filled with Wren eggs are frequent finds in odd places around the battle fields of the South.

"I have myself," says A. W. Anthony, of San Diego, Cal., "watched Cactus Wrens in New Mexico carrying grass and thickening the walls of their old nests in October, for winter use, and have found them hidden in their nests during a snowstorm in November. But there is another trait in bird nature that I have seen very little of in print – that of building nests before or after the proper season, seemingly for the sole purpose of practice or pastime, the out-cropping of an instinct that prompts ambitious birds to build out of season even though they know that their work will be lost."

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