Right at my elbow as I stood in July watching this was a blackbird’s nest. I must have brushed it more than once, but I never saw it until to-day. To be sure, when I first went there the young blackbirds were grown up and gone, for the nesting season with these birds is short, and by July the young are flying about with the flock, learning to sing “tchk, tchk, conkaree.” Had there been young or eggs in the nest the distress of the parent birds would have warned me of its presence. Lacking that, so cleverly was it placed for safety and concealment, I never noticed it till the passing of the leaves left it bare.
Ten feet away was another, a replica of the first. Among blackbirds good form in house-building has but one accepted style. The nest is rather deep, loosely woven of rough grass, lined with finer grasses. Standing on the little island to-day I could not help seeing these two nests which before I had passed a score of times without seeing, for if June is the time of year to hunt for birds’ nests, this is the time of year to find them.
The birds can give you, and I really think they are right about it, many reasons why you should not hunt for their nests in June. Looking at a nestful of young birds, with the mother fluttering solicitously about, I always feel as I think I should if I went into a town where I was not acquainted and went about peeping in at the nursery windows of peoples’ houses. My motives might be the best in the world. I might be making a study of nestlings and nests of the human family for scientific purposes; in fact, I might be a veritable “friendly visitor,” but I should be fortunate if I did not fall under suspicion, become the object of dislike, and eventually land in the police court.
The mere too frequent inspection of the nests and eggs of some birds will cause abandonment, and those parents who stand by do so with such evident distress that after the briefest possible satisfactory inspection we ought to apologize for the intrusion and step away. Many birds will even attempt to hasten this departure by pretty vigorous means.
None of these objections obtains now. There are no birds in this year’s nests, and you may gather them or tear them to pieces in analytical mood without doing harm, at least to the birds. Down stream, ten feet from my second blackbird’s nest, was a catbird’s. The catbird builds a better nest than the blackbird, at least so far as strength is concerned. Before the winter is over the grasses of the latter’s structure will be broken and blown away by the wind or washed back to earth by rain and snow.