Birds of Song and Story

by Elizabeth Grinnell; Joseph Grinnell

But there is no set pattern to go by, when nests are made. That is, there is no particular building material allowed, as with the swallows and some others. The yellow warbler loves best to use things that mat together readily, so the nest cup will be compact and thick, like a piece of felt cloth—so different from the nest of the grosbeak, transparent and open, like basketwork.

To get this cloth-like substance, the birds visit the sweet-fern stalks of the pasture sides, pulling off the woolly furze bit by bit, until a beakful is gathered. Then they make a trip to the brooks, especially in early spring, where they wake up the catkins on the pussy-willows and get loads of the soft fur. Oh, the secrets the pussy-willows know, about bird and bat and butterfly cocoon, and other winged people that frolic in their shadows! They could tell you exactly how many beakfuls of pussy fur it takes to weave a crib blanket for a yellow warbler's nest. Whole nests are made of it sometimes; for the warbler loves to gather one particular kind of material for a nest if sh& comes across enough of it in one spot. That is why they build so rapidly, always getting it done in a hurry. They love big loads of anything, and the male shows his mate where she can find it with the least trouble. In places where sheep pasture, rubbing against trees and catching their sides into thorns and sticks at every turn, the yellowbird gathers the wool. She likes this particularly, as it is light and clings to itself, and she can carry large quantities at one trip.

The happy boy or girl who has a pasture near by home is rich. There is nothing like a pasture to study nature in, especially birds. A wood lot with trees of all sizes in it, a cranberry bog, a huckleberry patch, a maple grove, a sweet-fern corner, with snake vines running at random among young brakes—ah! this is the spot of all the world for nature-lovers and birds. One can part the bushes and find a warbler's nest most anywhere. One can peer up into the treetops and find another. In the treetops the nest is fastened securely, be it where the winds have a habit of blowing through their fingers when it isn't necessary. But birds and winds are fair play-fellows and seldom interfere with one another.

Here, in southern California, we have little wind, if any, in the days of the summer yellowbird. So nests are often set in a crotch without a bit of fastening.

Two years ago a pair came to the house grounds, the first we had seen so near. We wondered what they would nest with first, knowing their disposition to take the material close at hand. We knew they strip the down from the backs of the sycamores in the mountain cañons, and gather bits of wool fiber from tree trunks, or ravel lint from late weed stems in the arroyos. So we anticipated and shook loose cotton-batting in a bush. No sooner did father yellowbird spy the fluffy, white stuff than he brought madam, and she was delighted. This cotton could be pulled by beakfuls, and an afternoon or two would make the entire nest.

And they used it, not getting another thing save some gray hairs from a lady's head, which in combing had escaped, and were saved on purpose for the birds.

The nest was placed in the crotch of a pepper-tree, just out of reach of tiptoe inquirers. Just one pinch of cotton above another until the cup was deep and true to the shaping of the mother's breast, she turning round and round after the manner of nest-builders. Through the layers ran separate hairs which held the cotton in shape.

It was a beautiful thing, that nest, even after it had served its purpose, and we took it down when the birds had flown. That was a mistake of ours. It was before we had come to know it is better to leave old nests undisturbed. Many birds love to return the coming season and repair last year's structures.

When the following summer came, and the yellowbirds returned from their winter in Mexico, they went straight to the same old tree. They crept up and down the trunk, peering into all the crotches, and criticising every place where a nest might have been. Perhaps a single speck of the cotton had 'remained and served for "a pointer"; anyway, the birds located the exact spot and went to work without more ado.