It is difficult to state its preference in regard to its choice of nesting sites, for it will select any place that suits its fancy. The hollow of a tree or a stump, a thickly branching shrub or a secluded nook in some unfrequented outhouse, perhaps with a knothole for a doorway—all these places are equally suitable and some one of them will meet the taste of this positive little bird.
The materials used in the construction of the bulky nests are any fibrous substance, sticks, leaves, fine grasses and “in fact trash of any kind.” The lining of the ball-like nest, which has a side entrance, is made of finer fibers, hair and grasses. In this cozy home are laid from four to six creamy white eggs which are “variously marked with reddish brown and lilac, in a wreath or cluster at the larger end.”
CAROLINA WREN.
(Thryothorus ludovicianus.)
About Life-size.
FROM COL. CHI. ACAD. SCIENCES.
THANKSGIVING BY THE NINNESCAH.
It was Thanksgiving Day in Kansas. The sun still shone warm over the yellow cornfields and the brown prairies, tho’ there was a hint of frost in the air, and the nearly bare trees stood as ominous tokens of the coming winter. The autumn wind blew a perfect gale from the southwest. Down in the valley by the river the sand was flying in stinging clouds, jerking the few remaining yellow leaves from the cottonwoods, ruffling the waters of the Ninnescah, beating the purple veil from the hedges where the autumn sun had tangled it, bending the long reeds, and drifting in little mounds beneath the wild-plum bushes.
On the uplands where the curly buffalo-grass spread its thick brown carpet, the whitened heads of the golden-rods bent before the wind, the sage-grass waved its long yellow stalks, and the sunflowers rattled their bare stems and brown heads together.
Behind the shelter of one of the sandhills beside the Ninnescah river a strange assembly of birds and beasts and creeping things had gathered.
A couple of rough-coated, sharp-eared gray coyotes were rolling and tumbling over one another in a good-natured scuffle.
A bunch of quails were picking up the seeds which the wind shook from the sunflower pods above them, while a few brown prairie chickens lay sunning themselves upon the sand.