File:Birds and nature in natural colors - being a scientific and popular treatise on four hundred birds of the United States and Canada (1913) (14751948462).jpg

Identifier: birdsnatureinnat05chic (find matches)
Title: Birds and nature in natural colors : being a scientific and popular treatise on four hundred birds of the United States and Canada
Year: 1913 (1910s)
Authors:
Subjects: Birds -- North America
Publisher: Chicago : A.W. Mumford, Publisher
Contributing Library: American Museum of Natural History Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Biodiversity Heritage Library

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Text Appearing Before Image:
ush-Tit is an elaborate affair about eight inches long andthree inches in diameter, and in form quite like a long purse. It is suspendedfrom the branches of any tree that suits the fancy of the birds, and is seldommore than five or six feet above the ground. The structure is a woven massof twigs, moss, bark fibers, leaves and lichens. The entrance is near the top andsheltered by a cover or roof of woven moss and lichens, and also by the foliageof twigs from which it is suspended. The opening is further strengthened by astrongly woven ring. An observer, describing the interior of a nest, says: Thepassageway, at a distance of two inches within the opening, suddenly contractsand its cource from being horizontal, descends perpendicularly to the bottom ofthe nest. The narrow passage below this neck-like contraction, as well as thewhole structure itself, again expands, growing larger as it descends, and thelower portion of the nest takes the shape of a cylindrical pouch, three inches in 818
Text Appearing After Image:
BUSH-TIT. (Psaltriparns mi minus;. I-ife-sjze. diameter at its j,reatcst cnlargcinc-nt. The length of the passageway is about sixinches. It seems almost impossible that two tiny birds can build in a shorttime such an elaborate and so large a nest. Even the gathering of the materialsmust require a large amount of labor. It has been suggested by several observersthat the nest is not the result of the labor of a single pair of birds, but thatthe whole flock unite their energies in its construction. The notes of the Bush-Tit well illustrate the ditTerence between the call-notes and danger signals of some of the smaller birds. Mr. John J. Williams, in anarticle on Common and Special Call Notes, published in a recent issue of theCondor, speaks of the Bush-Tits notes, lie says: Why these mites ofbirds should use a warning signal when near human beings, is beyond me, asthey are practically unmolested by them at any time, yet such is the case. Herethey flit incessantly, in small companies, fro

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