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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.
--DORA READ GOODALE.
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Wrens--That clumsy little bunch of animated feathers, the Wren, is
undoubtedly the most contented of dwellers on the face of the earth. In
country or city he is never homeless. Anything hollow, with an aperture
large enough to admit his jaunty little self is sufficient, and so long as
it remains undisturbed he is a happy tenant. The variety of sites selected
by this agile little creature, is greater than that of any other bird.
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.
The home of a Wren, a few miles from Petersburg, Va., furnishes the
strangest case in the matter of queer habitations yet discovered. This
country is the site of one of the most dramatic epochs of the civil war,
and frequently the bones of unburied soldiers are picked up. Recently a
rusty old skull was found in which one of these Wrens chose a shelter. The
skull, when found, was hidden in a patch of shrubbery. The interior of the
one-time pate was carefully cleaned out, and nestled in the basin of the
bony structure was the birth-place of many a baby Wren. The skull made a
perfect domicile. A bullet hole in the rear formed a window. An eyeless
socket was the exit and entrance to the grim home. It is easy to imagine
that many a family feud had its origin in the desire of others to possess
so secure a home.
"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."
[Illustration: BRUNNICHS MURRE.]
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