The yellow warbler is perhaps the oftenest chosen. Accessible and easily found, the nest is a beautiful cup-shaped structure lodged in the fork of a fruit tree, with perchance a spray of blossoms just over it--a house of silk, a satin bower. How awkward and uncouth must the cowbird appear squatting on this fragile silken thing to lay her eggs! Doubtless she watches the yellow bird stripping the dry grass stems and gathering the pappus of last year's cattails; squats low in the grass and looks all unconcerned while she marks the tree to which the fluffy material is carried, and bides her time till the nest is ready. Strange that she should never discover in herself the home-making instinct, for even nomads have their tents. Stranger still she should never once wish to undertake the duties of motherhood. For a time, perhaps, the young cowbird is influenced by the habit of the bird that happens to mother it, whether this be a ground-sparrow or a tree-loving flycatcher. But it grows up a cowbird with all the inheritance of that peculiar tribe, and its brief contact with a superior race leaves no impress upon it. In spite of cowbirds and the exigencies of life the woods are full of young birds, their tails not yet grown. This is their childhood--a brief one--as the days in the nest were their infancy. They are exacting children, yet they do not clamor to be amused, but only to be fed. I have seen a young chipping-sparrow, its tail half grown, showing how recently it was from the nest, pick up a straw and carry it about. So early does the maternal instinct show itself. This straw was its doll-baby, the only plaything it could know, and this its solemn play. There is a mild and innocent expression about young birds, as there is in the faces of children, apparent to a keen vision only. They have yet to be hardened by experience and vicissitude. The countenances of the old take on an astute and alert expression. These young black-and-white creepers and chestnut warblers, now shifting for themselves for the first time, come about with gentle confidence. They creep and flit through the trees, coming nearer and nearer, until you look directly into their small innocent faces and could put your hand upon them. Then as it would seem they were about to descend like blessings upon your head, they withdraw and recede from view into the wilderness of leaves where only your thoughts may follow them. SONGS OF THE WOODS