We have seventy species of these little birds in the United States, and every one is working as hard as he can from morning till night, for our benefit. For every one eats insects, and enormous numbers of them. Some scramble over trees and pick them out from bud and blossom and under leaves, others go over the bark, and others fly out like flycatchers.
Some of them work in the tops of tall trees, others work in the orchards, some in bushes, and some on the ground. But wherever they live, they are beautiful to look at, and bewitching to study.
Though they are little, they have plenty of spirit. I know of one kept in a room with several other birds, all bigger than himself. You might think he would be treated as big boys would treat a little one. But no, indeed! the tiny fellow made himself ruler of the whole party. He took the biggest bathing-dish, the best seed-cup, and the most desirable perch, and drove away any big bird who dared to claim either.
The Yellow Warbler, found all over the country, is often called the wild canary, for, as you see him fly, he appears to be entirely yellow, but when you get nearer, you will see that on his breast are fine stripes of reddish brown. His mate is all in yellow-olive color.
They are very sweet little creatures, and make one of the prettiest nests in America. It is usually in an upright fork of a tree, or bush. It is made of fine material, among the rest a good deal of a gray silky stuff which gives it a beautiful look.
This bird is one of the few who will not bring up a cowbird baby. When the tiny mother finds a cowbird's egg in her nest, she builds another story on top of the nest, leaving the egg to spoil. Sometimes a cowbird finds the second nest, and then the warbler adds a third story. Nests have been found three stories high, with a dried-up cowbird egg in each of the two lower stories.
A strange thing happened once to a pair of yellow warblers. When the nest was done and the eggs laid, a storm threw it out of place, and tipped it over to one side, so that the little mother did not dare trust it for a cradle. So she built another nest in the same bush, and went to sitting on that.
One day a bird-lover chanced to see the two nests, one with the bird sitting, the other tipped partly over and left with the eggs still in it. To see what the birds would do, he put the fallen nest back in place, and made it firm, and then went away. The little pair looked at the nest, and had a great deal of chatter over it. It was their own nest and their own eggs, but the mother could not sit in two places.
Finally, the singer took his place on the restored nest. After that it was watched, and the two birds sat on the two nests till all the young were hatched, and then fed and reared them. When they were ready to fly, the happy birds had a big family to take care of.