Exactly as though they remembered, they went also to the supply counter where we had placed more cotton in advance of their coming, and with it they built exactly the same white nest in the very crotch of last year's happy history.
It was a pretty sight to see the mother take the cotton. It looked sparklingly white against her breast and dripping from her beak. And all the time she was arranging it in the nest to suit her experienced mind, her mate sang, warbling his sympathy, darting through the leaves, and running up and down the branches. This running up and down the boughs, so like their cousins, the creepers, makes this bird look graceful of form and motion, as indeed he is, anywhere and at anything he does. On this account he is often called the gem-bird, his brilliant grace suggesting some precious and coveted stone.
These warblers of ours did not feign lameness, if we came near the nest, as some of the family are said to do. From daily companionship they came to know and trust us. Had the nest been a little lower we should have succeeded in taming them completely, as we have many of the wild birds at nesting-time.
We have left the nest where it is this fall, hoping the birds will return and claim it another year. It being of cotton, however, and having no threads to bind it in the crotch, we think the winter storms will wreck it.
It has been claimed by good authority that the cow-bird loves to deposit her eggs in the yellow warbler's nest. But this is of little avail to the cow-bird's trick, for Madam Warbler sees the point and the egg at a glance. She often builds above the intruder, imprisoning the alien egg, and so leaves it to its fate. A single bird is said to have built above the cow-bird's egg three times in succession, as the intruder persisted, until there were four floors to the nest, on the last of which the mother succeeded in laying her own eggs. If she becomes discouraged by the persistency of her guilty neighbor, she will leave the spot sometimes and search for another in which to carry on her own affairs in peace.
Of the seventy-five or more species of this warbler family said to occur in the United States, all resemble each other in points enough to mark them as warblers. All are insect-eaters. Some are called worm-eaters, others bug-eaters. They despise a vegetable diet. On account of their sharp appetite for grubs and larvæ, the warblers are the friends of all who live by the growth of green things and the ripening of fruits and grains. With few exceptions all the birds are small and very beautiful. Theirs is the second largest family among our birds, ranking next to the sparrows.
Some of the warblers live near streams, playing boat on floating driftwood, hunting for insects in the decaying timbers, running up and down half-submerged logs atilt on the shore, after spiders and water-beetles.
If they are missed we may be sure they will return in their own good time, bringing their warble with them. They may only stay long enough for breakfast or dinner, taking advantage of their stop-over tickets, like any travelers of note. Perhaps the strong, courageous, singing males of the party of travelers come in advance of the females and young, as if to see that the country is ready and at peace. Nothing can be said of them more beautiful and fitting than this quotation from Elliott Coues:
"With tireless industry do the warblers defend the human race. They visit the orchard when the apple and pear, the peach, plum, and cherry, are in bloom, seeming to revel among the sweet-scented blossoms, but never faltering in their good work. They peer into crevices of the bark, and explore the very heart of the buds, to detect, drag forth, and destroy those tiny creatures which prey upon the hopes of the fruit-grower, and which, if undisturbed, would bring all his care to naught. Some warblers flit incessantly in the tops of the tallest trees, others hug close to the scored trunks and gnarled boughs of the forest kings; some peep from the thickets and shrubbery that deck the watercourses, playing at hide-and-seek; others, more humble still, descend to the ground, where they glide with pretty mincing steps and affected turning of the head this way and that, their delicate flesh-tinted feet just stirring the layer of withered leaves with which a past season carpeted the sod. We may see warblers everywhere in their season and find them a continual surprise."
"Sweet and true are the notes of his song:
Sweet, and yet always full and strong;
True, and yet they are never sad.
Serene with that peace that maketh glad;
Life! Life! Life!
Oh, what a blessing is life!
Life is glad."