With most species of our birds the nest is entirely built by the female. With the robin, the wood thrush, the ph[oe]be, the oriole, the hummingbird, the pewee, and many others, the male is only an interested spectator of the proceeding. He usually attends his mate in her quest for material, but does not lend a hand, or a bill. I think the cock wren assists in nest-building. I know the male cedar-bird does, and probably the male woodpeckers do also. The male rose-breasted grosbeak assists in incubation, and has been seen to sing upon the nest. It seems fair to infer that he assists in the nest-building also, but I am not certain that he does, and I have heard another observer state that in a nest which he watched the female apparently did it all.
My catbirds both worked overtime one afternoon at least, being on their job as late as seven o'clock. In three days the nest was done, all but touching up the interior. During the construction I laid out pieces of twine and bits of white paper on the bushes and wire netting, also some loose material from the outside of the old nest; all was quickly used. How much labor the birds would have saved themselves had they pulled the old nest to pieces and used the material a second time! I have known the oriole to start a nest, then change her mind, and then detach some of her strings and fibers and carry them to the new site; and I once saw a "chebec" whose eggs had been destroyed pull the old nest to pieces and rebuild it in a tree a hundred feet away.
The male catbird is slightly brighter and fresher-looking than his mate, but we could easily tell her by her often simulating the actions of a young bird when she came with material in her beak; she would alight on a near-by post and slightly spread and quiver her wings in a tender, beseeching kind of way. She would do this also when bringing food to her first brood. When one of the parent birds of any species simulates by voice or manner the young birds, it is always the female; her heart would naturally be more a-quiver with anticipation than that of the male.
On the fifth day the nest was completed and received its first egg. There was considerable delay with the second egg, but it appeared on the second or third day, and the third egg the following day. Then incubation began. In twenty days from the day the nest was begun, the birds were hatched, and in eleven days more they had quietly left the nest.
A friend of mine who has a summer home on one of the trout-streams of the Catskills discovered that the catbird was fond of butter, and she soon had one of the birds coming every day to the dining-room window for its lump of fresh butter, and finally entering the dining-room, perching on the back of the chair, and receiving its morsel of butter from a fork held in the mistress's hand. I think the butter was unsalted. My friend was convinced after three years that the same pair of birds returned to her each year, because each season the male came promptly for his butter.
The furtive and stealthy manners of the catbird contrast strongly with the frank, open manners of the thrushes. Its cousin the brown thrasher goes skulking about in much the same way, flirting from bush to bush like a culprit escaping from justice. But he does love to sing from the April tree-tops where all the world may see and hear, if said world does not come too near. In the South and West the thrasher also nests in the vicinity of houses, but in New York and New England we must look for him in remote, bushy fields. I do not know of any bad traits that go with the thrasher's air of suspicion and secrecy, but I do know of one that goes with the catbird's—I have seen her perch on the rim of another bird's nest and deliberately devour the eggs. But only once. Whether or not she frequently does this, I have no evidence. If she does, she is doubtless so sly about it that she escapes observation.
I welcomed the catbird, though she is not so attractive a neighbor as the wood thrush. She has none of the wood thrush's dignity and grace. She skulks and slinks away like a culprit, while the wood thrush stands up before you or perches upon a limb, and turns his spotted waistcoat toward you in the most open and trusting manner. In fact, few birds have such good manners as the wood thrush, and few have so much the manner of a Paul Pry and eavesdropper as the catbird. The flight of the wood thrush across the lawn is such a picture of grace and harmony, it is music to the eye. The catbird seems saying, "There, there! I told you so, pretty figure, pretty figure you make!" But the courteous thrush (just here I heard the excited calls of robins and the hoarse, angry caw of a crow, and rushed out hatless to see a fish crow fly away from the maple in front of the Study, pursued by a mob of screeching robins. He took refuge in the spruces above the house where the collected robins abused him from surrounding branches. On my appearance he flew away, and the robins dispersed)—but the courteous thrush, I say, invites the good-breeding in you which he himself shows. The thrush never has the air of a culprit, while the catbird seldom has any other air. But I welcome them both. One shall stand for the harmony and repose of bird life, and the other for its restlessness and curiosity. The songs and the manners of birds correspond. The catbird, the brown thrasher, and the mockingbird are all theatrical in their manners—full of gestures of tail and wings, and their songs all imply an audience, while the serene melody of the thrushes is in keeping with the grace and poise of their behavior.
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