. Birds through the year . LAPWING ON NEST birds; and the cock wren seems to carry the same processsome stages further. He is not an earth-haunting bird, likethe plover, and so he builds his bower among walls and roofsand trees ; and he makes a very neat and compact littlearbour, though it is only the shell of a regular nest. Here,too, it seems that the hen bird turned the cocks taste forrude nest-building to her own purposes and made nurseriesof his bowers. Most cocks nests never get any further,and most true nests do not begin as cocks nests, but arebuilt with every appearance of being meant
. Birds through the year . LAPWING ON NEST birds; and the cock wren seems to carry the same processsome stages further. He is not an earth-haunting bird, likethe plover, and so he builds his bower among walls and roofsand trees ; and he makes a very neat and compact littlearbour, though it is only the shell of a regular nest. Here,too, it seems that the hen bird turned the cocks taste forrude nest-building to her own purposes and made nurseriesof his bowers. Most cocks nests never get any further,and most true nests do not begin as cocks nests, but arebuilt with every appearance of being meant to hold eggs fromthe start. But we have known a case in which a typicalcocks nest of the wren after remaining empty for more. o D O wa og p ww zw THE BUILDERS 49 than three weeks was finally completed by a lining offeathers, and was apparently ready for eggs when we left theneighbourhood. Probably there is no absolute distinctionbetween the two kinds of nest, but the growth of the nurseryout of the bower or playground is still recalled by occasionalcombinations of the two purposes. All the first nests of the year either dispense with con-cealment as ostentatiously as the rooks or magpies, or attainit by being built inside holes or thick cover. The stock-doveand wood-owl hide their white eggs in holes, and most black-birds and thrushes secure fair protection in an evergreen bushor in the fork of thick boughs. Others seem absolutely care-less, and their eggs and young are usually destroyed by bird-nesting boys or animals, or by the fear of the bird itself toincubate in the publicity which it seemed to court whenbuilding. But soon nests appear which display an exquisiteharmony with their surroundings, so as to
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1920, booksubjectbirdspi, bookyear1922
