More beautiful are the nests which the Red-winged Blackbirds build. These are the birds that affect our swamps and marshes, and make the air ring with their loud, clear, resonant notes. Before me is a nest that surpasses in beauty the average structure. It is a bulky affair for the species, but so symmetrical in contour, and so quaintly, deftly woven, that the eye never tires in looking at it, nor the mind in contemplating its wonderful mechanism. Broad ribbons of grasses are its composing materials, and eight of them are so woven into the nest as to securely fasten it to the tall typhas in the summit of which it was placed. [Illustration: RED-WINGED BLACKBIRD’S NEST. Located in a Field of Timothy.] But a more clever nest of these birds, and one that is as unique in shape as it is in texture and composition, was found in the summer of 1879 in the vicinity of Philadelphia. It was built in a field of timothy, many of the stalks of which being wrought into the fabric. Its shape is that of an inverted cone, and so beautifully, symmetrically and compactly put together is it, that one could hardly credit the builders with the possession of the skill necessary to the production of so perfect a domicile. Externally the nest is formed of grasses and rushes, neatly and intricately interwoven, with here and there a head of the dry pappus of some species of hawkweed. Sedges and fine grasses make for it a cosy and comfortable lining. This nest shows quite conspicuously in the drawing, but in its natural position, in the centre of a large field, the authors had spared no pains to have its concealment as perfect as possible. Typical nests of these Blackbirds are somewhat irregular in outline, and rather coarsely and rudely built of stubble and broad grasses, variously intermingled, and lined with soft meadow grass. Usually they are placed in clusters of weeds or in the tops of small bushes alongside of streams of water. High positions are seldom chosen for nesting purposes, as they offer poor facilities for food-collecting, the aquatic larvæ, may-flies, dragon-flies and mosquitos, which constitute a prominent part of the diet of these birds, being only found in marshy situations. Small bushes along the margins of streams, from the double advantage which they possess, are almost exclusively adopted in certain localities. Being convenient to appropriate food-stuffs, they are, at the same time, out of the reach of snakes, especially water-snakes, which have a decided fondness for young birds.