Page:Bird-lore Vol 04.djvu/143

 122 Bird-Lore

The birds built the rim of their nest stout and strong, twisting the web about the twigs and over and over upon itself where it stretched from twig to twig till I wondered at their ingenuity and patience. Their little beaks reminded me of the needle of the sewing machine with its eye at the pointed end. If some Elias Howe of the earlier times had only watched a Weaver—bird with its thread in the tip of its bill the world would not have waited so long for one piece of its useful mechanism. Inside and outside the little heads would reach, with the prettiest turns and curvetings imaginable, till. as the nest grew deeper, the work was done more and more from the inside. Then it was gathered together at the bottom, with side joined to side. When this part of the work ﬁrst took place the nest seemed to be strangely lacking in depth and had an unshapely look altogether.

But this was the point where the full revelation came to me of how the deepest part is shaped. I saw the bird at this stage inside the nest raise her wings against the upper rim and the twigs which held it and strain with her wings upward and her feet downward till the nest itself grew so thin that I could see throught it in places. Then they began again, for the most part from the inside. weaving in more material to thicken and strengthen sides and bottom where these had become thin and weak through the stretching. This was done many times over until the proper depth and thickness were both secured. The nest after being stretched out in this way would be like the coarse warp of a fabric on a loom, and into this the little weavers wove their silken threads.

5. After this came the embellishing with the hits of lichen. These were brought, and fastened on by means of little filmy threads of the spider_drawn from the surface of the nest and fastened down over the moss. There was not nearly so much of the lichen used on this nest as on others which I have seen with the glass. It may be that the birds felt a sense of protection from our presence and less need of hiding their home, for they became very tame and quite undisturbed when we stood at the open window.

6. The brooding time was full of interest to us. So far as we could judge by the birds' actions, there were three eggs. We could not see into the nest. After the sitting proper seemed to have begun it was in about two weeks' time that we saw the first signs of life in the nest. The male bird took his part with the female in the incubating. He would bring food to her as she sat upon the nest and, I am not quite sure, but think that she did the same with him.

The bird sitting would frequently sing while on the nest. This ques- tion was asked, through the columns of BlRD-LORE, about the Yellow- throat by some one from a western state, and here is an answer. I sometimes thought that the deep-toned cbirrup was a signal on the part of