Birds: Birds' Nests

THE NEST OF THE MOURNING DOVE. — The nest of the Carolina or Mourning Dove, which authorities place on the horizontal limb of a tree, is not always found in this situation, as I can testify. Last year, while wandering in early May through a piece of low woodland in Amherst, Mass., my eye was caught by a pair of well-grown youngsters covered with bluish pin feathers. The nest containing them — a loose affair of small sticks and leaves — was placed on the ground, or rather on the decayed base of a stump, surrounded by a ring of second-growth birches.				Immediately suspecting their identify, I merged myself in the landscape after the manner of bird-lovers, and was soon regarded by a sight of the parent Doves, who came sweeping down from a neighboring tree, uttering their pensive call-note. The pair had been frequent visitors about the lawn and drive-way for a few weeks previous. I have heard of another similar instance of ground-nesting on the part of Wild Doves. —DORA READ GOODALE.

WRENS — That clumsy little bunch of animated feathers, the Wren, is undoubtedly the most contented of dwellers on the face of the earth. In country or city he is never homeless. Anything hollow, with an aperture large enough to admit his jaunty little self is sufficient, and so long as it remains undisturbed he is a happy tenant. The variety of sites selected by this agile little creature, is greater than that of any other bird. It has been said that “a Wren will build in anything from a bootleg to a bomb-shell.” And this seems to be so. Many an urchin can testify to having fThe home of a Wren, a few miles from Petersburg, Va., furnishes the strangest case in the matter of queer habitations yet discovered. This country is the site of one of the most dramatic epochs of the civil war, and frequently the bones of unburied soldiers are picked up.ound the neat nest of the Wren in his cast-off shoe or a tin can, and nests filled with Wren eggs are frequent finds in odd places around the battle fields of the South. Recently a rusty old skull was found in which one of these Wrens chose a shelter.				The skull, when found, was hidden in a patch of shrubbery. The interior of the one-time pate was carefully cleaned out, and nestled in the basin of the bony structure was the birth-place of many a baby Wren. The skull made a perfect domicile. A bullet hole in the rear formed a window. An eyeless socket was the exit and entrance to the grim home. It is easy to imagine that many a family feud had its origin in the desire of others to possess so secure a home. “I have myself,” says A. W. Anthony, of San Diego, Cal., “watches Cactus Wrens in New Mexico carrying grass and thickening the walls of their old nests in October, for winter use, and have found them hidden in their nests during a snowstorm in November. But there is another trait in bird nature that I have seen very little of in print — that of building nests before or after the proper season, seemingly for the sole purpose of practice or pastime, the out-cropping of an instinct that prompts ambitious birds to build out of season even though they know that their work will be lost.”