Among us, the most accomplished bird-architect is the wren, which, in compliment to his building powers, is by our neighbors called the roitelet, or little king; and certainly no king has a more comfortable dwelling. The most flexible grass roots, the finest grass, the softest moss, the most delicate down from its own breast, constitute the materials of this beautiful structure, which forms a perfect sphere of dark emerald green. This edifice has two doors, one at which the little king or queen enters, the other through which it emerges when it desires to stretch its wings or plume its feathers. When at home, the point of the bill and the tip of the tail are visible at the opposite entrances, while the vaulted roof protects it from raindrops, and assists in concentrating the heat by which the regal fledglings are hatched. The builder of St. Paul's, when projecting his magnificent dome, may have taken a hint from his ancestors the wrens. But, unwilling to accumulate all her gifts on one of her children, nature has left the roitelet quite without the power of charming Madame Wren by his voice, a fact to which Shakespeare alludes where he says:
"The nightingale, if she should sing by day,
When every goose is cackling, would be thought
No better musician then the wren."
But this unmusical character does not belong to all the varieties of the wren, since there is one kind which may be regarded as a songster. With respect to external appearance, there are few northern birds more favored than the golden-crested wren, the feathers of whose crest, as they glance and quiver, look like sprays of burnished gold in the sunbeams. The war recently declared against these little people is as absurd as it is cruel. Supposed to be the gardener's enemies, they have been hunted down without pity or remorse; whereas, instead of destroying the fruit, they only eat the insects which do really destroy it, and should therefore be esteemed as little winged scavengers, who clear away from gardens very much that is pernicious. If we understood our own interest, we should look upon our diminutive ally, not exceeding two drachms in weight, much as the Turks do upon the stork, which they reverence for its filial piety. If contempt can dwell within breasts so small, the wren must surely feel it for the stone curlew, which, too ignorant or too lazy to build a nest at all, lays its eggs on the bare ground, where they are crushed by Hodge's foot or by the plough.
The country people in France love the song of the wren, which is most agreeable in the month of May, that being the breeding-season. In many French provinces, the rustics entertain so great a respect for the roitelet, that they not only abstain from injuring it, but will not so much as touch its nest, built sometimes against the sides of their houses or stables, though generally a thick bush or full-foliaged tree is preferred. Like nearly all other birds, the wren takes a fancy to some particular locality, where it will construct its habitation, in spite of dangers and difficulties. Its eggs, from ten to twelve in number, are about the size of peas, and when they are hatched it becomes so fierce and pugnacious that it will attack large birds, and put them to flight by the punctures of its sharp bill. It is the smallest of European birds, and holds, therefore, with us the place which the humming-bird occupies in Asia and America. This diminutive creature, which is as ingenious as it is affectionate, forms its tiny nest with cotton or fine, silky filaments, which it twines and arranges so as to afford the softest conceivable couch for its eggs, which never exceed two in number, and resemble small white beads, dotted with bright yellow. The young, when they first emerge from the shell, are little larger than flies, and perfectly naked, though a fine down soon appears upon the skin, which gradually ripens into feathers so brilliant and dazzling in color as not to be exceeded by the rarest gems, or even by the tints of the rainbow. So great, in fact, is the beauty of these birds, that the ladies of the countries in which they abound suspend them instead of diamonds as drops to their earings.
Tiny as the humming-bird is, neither the eagle nor the condor exceeds it in love for its young. A French missionary, during his residence in Surinam, took a humming-bird's nest in which the young were just hatched, and placed it on the sill of an open window in a cage. The parents, as he conjectured, followed their young, and brought them food, the male and female by turns, which they introduced between the bars of the cage. At length, finding that no attempt was made to harm them, they grew fond of the place, and perching upon the top of the cage, or flying about the room, rewarded the worthy priest by their music for the delicate fare he soon learned to provide for them. This was a sort of soft paste made of biscuit, Spanish wine, and sugar, and nearly transparent. Over this they passed their long tongues, and when they had satisfied their hunger, either fell asleep or burst forth into song. Familiarity, if it did not in their case breed contempt, at least banished all apprehension, for they alighted on the priest's head, or perched on his finger, where their long rainbow-like tails floated like little ribbons in the air. But all earthly pleasures have an end; a rat ate up the humming-birds, nest and all, and left the poor missionary to seek for new companions.
Down among the coral-reefs in the Southern Pacific you meet with other bird structures, which in their way deserve equal attention. Here the sea-eagles build their nests, always, if possible, in the same islet, and, if there be such a convenience, on the same tree. On a small wild flat in the ocean, too confined to allure inhabitants, and apparently too arid for vegetation, there grew nevertheless one tree, on which a pair of fishing-eagles erected their dwelling. There these lords of the waves, contemplating their vast empire, sat aloft in their eyrie, male and female, looking at their eggs, and dreaming of the future. Our readers will remember the Raven's Oak, which the woodman, whose brow like a penthouse hung over his eyes, felled and floated down the course of the river. So it was with the tree of the fishing-eagles; some savage applied his axe to the stem, and down it came, though, it is to be presumed, not while the young eagles were in the nest, for the mother did not break her heart, neither did the father follow the timber with vindictive pertinacity. On the contrary, having consulted his helpmate, he took up his lodgings in a bush, and there provided as well as he could for the support and comfort of his heirs and successors. There might be tall trees at no great distance, there might also be islands larger and prettier; but he was born on this sandy flat; he therefore loved it, and stuck to it, and, had it not provided him with a bush, he would have built his nest on the sand. Such, over some creatures, is the power of locality. The higher the nature, the more extensive become the sympathies, so that to some it is enough if they can rest anywhere on this globe. They love the planet in general, but would like, if they could, to make a country excursion from it to Jupiter, Sirius, or Canopus, just by way of exercising their wings.
We have seen the humming-bird building in a little garden shrub, the tailor-bird in the folds of a leaf; but there is one of their family which selects a far more extraordinary situation, in order to place its young beyond the reach of vermin. Selecting the tallest tree within the range of its experience, it weaves for itself a sort of long pouch with a narrow neck, and suspends it to the point of a bare twig some sixty or seventy feet from the ground. There, in its pensile habitation, it lays its eggs, warms them into life, and when the callow brood begin to open their bills, feeds them fifty or sixty times in the day with such dainties as their constitutions require. This bird is the Aplonis metallica, about the size of a starling, with plumage of a dark glossy green, interfused with purple, which gives forth as it flies bright metallic reflections. The aplonis is gregarious, like man, since it loves to build its nest in the close neighborhood of other creatures of its own species, so that you may often behold fifty nests on the same tree, waving and balancing in the air. On the plain beneath, the aplonis sees from its nest the long necked emu flying like the wind before the hunter, immense flights of white pigeons, or the shy and active bower-bird constructing its palace, four feet long by almost two feet in height, where it eats berries with its harem, brings up its offspring, and, darting hither and thither before the savage, seeks to allure him away from its home. All the shrubs, and vines, and low thickets in the vicinity are haunted by perroquets no larger than sparrows, whose plumage, gorgeous as the brightest flowers, may be said to light up the woods.
The only European bird that builds a pensile nest is one of the family that we familiarly denominate toun-tits. This liliputian architect is as choice in his materials as he is skilful in the arrangement of them—his bases, his arches, his metopes, and architraves consist of cobwebs, the finest mosses, the most silky grasses, which are woven, and twisted, and matted together, so as to defy the drenching of the most pitiless storms, while within, his wife and little ones recline on beds of down as soft as the breast of a swan. Scarcely less genius is displayed by the magpie, which, having constructed its dwelling with extraordinary care, covers it with a sheath of thorns, which, bristling all round like quills upon the fretful porcupine, effectually defend it from the approach of insidious enemies. The portal to this airy palace is at a little distance scarcely visible; but if you diligently observe, you will perceive the magpie dart swiftly between the thorns, and disappear beneath his formidable chevaux de-frise. To this stronghold he sometimes carries his strange thefts—his gold and silver coins, his spoons, his sugar-tongs, and any other bright article that strikes his fancy. Birds of the dove kind are proverbial for the slovenly style in which they provide for their families. Putting together a few sticks, which form a sort of rack to support their eggs, they think they have done enough for posterity, and forthwith lay without scruple upon this frail cradle. It may be fairly conjectured that they say to themselves: "If man will eat my eggs, my young ones, and me, upon him be the charge of seeing that I have decent accommodation." In the same spirit act all the barn-door fowls, hardly taking the trouble to find a soft place for their eggs, but laying anywhere, like the stone curlew. This reckless depravity of the maternal instinct has generally been attributed to the ostrich as well as to the domestic hen—but unjustly. She lays, it is true, her eggs in the sand, but not without knowing where she puts them, and not without visiting the same spot daily to lay a new egg, till, as the French say, she has finished her ponte. If the case were otherwise, how could we account for finding all her eggs together? Nature has informed her, that in those warm latitudes in which she shakes her feathers, it is quite unnecessary for her to squat upon her eggs, which the solar heat amply suffices to hatch; indeed, so scorching is the sand of the desert, that if she did not lay her family hopes tolerably deep, her eggs would be roasted instead of hatched. To the superficial observation of man, the surface of the desert looks all alike—smooth, undulating, or blown up into hillocks; but the ostrich's practised eye is able to detect the minutest elevations in the arenaceous plain, so that she can go straight to the spot where her first egg has been left, to deposit a second and a third close to it. Indeed, the Arabs, who habitually traverse the waste, sometimes rival her in keenness of perception, and take forth her treasures, while in maternal confidence she is scouring hither and thither in search of food.