An amusing thing happened here some years ago over a bird of this species. A lady caller, a summer resident, asked me for the name of a bird which often visited a tree over her sitting-room window. She claimed that the bird was pure white with red wings. I could not make her understand that there was no such bird in New England. "Seeing is believing," she exclaimed, and I was invited to investigate for myself. While looking from the sitting-room window I saw the bird above my head on a twig. Sure enough, he was a white bird with red wings. It was a chestnut-sided warbler. From a distance the effect was enough like a white bird with red wings to deceive any one not well acquainted with bird life. Looking up to the bird the chestnut sides resembled red wings.
I sent the lady into an upper room, where she could look down on her white bird, and she soon returned, and laughingly said, "I always knew that there were two sides to a story, and now I have just learned that there are two sides to a bird."
May 27, 1902, five years after the foregoing history was published, the same little bird hopped to my feet for nesting material. I gave her some cotton twine, cut to eight-inch lengths, and she carried away two pieces. She flew to a small hollow about twenty feet south of my spring. I followed, and seated on a small boulder, watched the nest building for the next two hours. I could reach out and touch the bush that contained the nesting material, but the little mother paid no attention to my presence, only to turn a bright eye on me, after she had coiled a piece of string or blade of grass in the bottom of the nest. I think she wanted me to criticise her work. I usually told her that it was well done, and so it was. The bush was a sweet pepper bush, and the nest was saddled between the main stem and two twigs. When I first saw the nest it was but just begun. The bottom was a small wad of some gray material, which I found afterward was shreds of wool from an old gray coat that I had discarded. I placed grass and string on my knee and the bird's keen sight discovered it at once. She fearlessly hopped from a twig to my knee and examined the material. She was satisfied with the inspection and took three blades of grass to the nest. When she had coiled them, one stiff blade insisted on standing out straight. She put this in place three times, but it would straighten out each time. She flew away and returned immediately with some spider-web with which she fastened the blade of grass to one of the twigs. The male warbler swung from a twig over the nest and inspected the work. Once he pulled out a piece of string and his wife caught him in the act, and flew at him in a great rage. I put my hand on the nest and she pecked my finger and scolded me roundly. After two hours' hard work, she was coaxed away by her mate and I returned to my writing. Day by day I watched the nest building until it was finished, seven days after it was begun. It was lined with horsehair. The little bird spent most of the seventh day in shaping the nest. She would turn about, pressing the sides of the nest with her breast, until the whole nest was made firm and as round as an apple. The nest was deserted for three days before the first egg was laid. Four eggs, the usual number, were laid, and then I found the mother bird on the nest toward sunset. For the next three days she did what all chestnut-sided warblers do, sit on the nest nights and roam about through the day. After this I always found her on the nest until the little ones were out.
I made up my mind to tame these young birds so they would come at my call. I bred some meal worms and began to feed them to the baby birds. The mother objected at first, but after awhile she appeared to know that I would not harm them, and she would look on while I was passing the worms to the birds. After the young birds were out of the nest, and flying around in the shrubbery, I would hunt them up. One bird would come to my finger to eat, but the others were shy and as they grew older they would not remain for the proffered worm. They all drifted away to the huckleberry fields and I lost them until nearly time for migration. Then they came to the water in the dooryard to bathe. My tame bird would take flies and green worms from my hand as of old, but the three others preferred to feed themselves. When the birds returned in migration the next spring, I hunted high and low for my tame warbler but did not find him. The warblers that nest along the old road are quite tame for wild birds. They will come within four feet of an observer. They have attracted the attention of visitors by this trait. I think many of these tame birds are the descendants of my little bird friend that for sixteen years has consecrated my cabin dooryard.
BLUE JAYS.
XVI.
INSTINCT
Instinct is the overworked and much abused word of many writers. As applied to the wild things, we often stumble on to the terms, instinct of direction, instinct of migration, instinct of song, instinct of nest building, and so on. Webster gives several definitions as to the meaning of instinct. The following covers the ground: