06

Bird-Nesting in Winter

Ernest Thompson Seton

Ernest Thompson Seton has for a long time been studying birds and animals, and writing about them. He is also an artist of wild life. For a number of years he lived in the backwoods of Canada and on the plains of the West. In this article he gives some very sensible advice about gathering birds' nests.

What good are old bird-nests? These are some of the uses they serve: A deer mouse seeking the safety of a bramble thicket and a warm house, will make his own nest in the deserted home of a cat-bird. A gray squirrel will roof over the open nest of a crow or hawk and so make it a castle in the air for himself. But one of the strangest uses is this: the solitary sandpiper is a bird that cannot build a tree nest for itself and yet loves to give to its eggs the safety of a high place; so it lays in the old nest of a robin, or other tree bird, and there its young are hatched. But this is only in the Far North. There are plenty of old bird-nests left for other uses and for you.

Bird-nesting in summer is wicked, cruel, and against the law. But bird-nesting in winter is good fun and harms no one if we take only the little nests that are built in forked twigs or on rock ledges. For most little birds prefer to make a new nest for themselves each season.

If you get the nest of a goldfinch (floss nest), a phoebe (moss nest), a robin (mud nest), a vireo (good nest), a king-bird (rag nest), an oriole (bag nest), you have six different kinds of beautiful nests that are easily kept for the museum, and you do no harm in taking them.

NOTES AND QUESTIONS

1. Why is it cruel to collect bird nests in summer?

2. What kinds of birds usually make new nests each season?

3. Turn back to page 4 and find something there that shows how extremely foolish it is for people to destroy birds.

4. Make a list of all the materials you know that birds use to make nests. perhaps you can give some that are not mentioned in this story.

5. Make a list of birds that nest on the ground and another list of those that nest in trees.

6. If you have any birds' nests, bring them to school and study how they are made.

7. If you have ever watched birds building nests, be ready to tell the class what you saw.