Then the murder was out. The extra height had been added to the structure to circumvent the villainy of a cowbird. The cowbird lays her eggs in nests of birds that are smaller than herself and there leaves them to be hatched. She is partial to yellow warblers’ nests because the eggs that belong there are much like hers in coloring, though smaller, and the fraud is less likely to be detected. When hatched the young cowbird is so much larger and stronger that it starves out the other nestlings or crowds them out. The nest-builders in the main are foolish enough to bring up this murderous changeling; hence cowbirds are perpetuated. Perhaps these warblers had had one experience. Anyway, finding the cowbird’s egg in their nest, they had promptly roofed it over with fern wool and fiber, built up the sides to correspond to the addition, and gone on with their housekeeping. Here was evidence of prompt action in an emergency in nest-building. I do not think it possible for the birds to have lifted the cowbird’s egg over the side of their nest and to have dropped it on the ground, which would have been the quickest way of getting rid of it. A yellow warbler’s nest “tumbles home” a bit at the top, as does the hull of a yacht, and I do not think their slender claws could grasp the egg and get it over that lip. Instead, they had done what they could,--imprisoned the intruder egg where it could not hatch. I found it there, addled and nearly dried up within, and I rejoiced. The cowbird is a light-o’-love and abandons children on other people’s doorsteps. All such should be put in a pie. Since English sparrows became so plentiful the cowbird has shown a decided partiality for their nests for its abandoned offspring. I found a cowbird’s egg with those of an English sparrow that nested in a crevice right over my front door last spring. If cowbirds must behave in this nefarious manner it is not so bad to find them choosing the English sparrows for their dupes. The surprising part of it is to find the cowbird with sufficient courage to come in under the porch. I’d like to watch a young cowbird growing up in a nestful of young English sparrows. The tender nestlings of the yellow warbler have no show, but I have an idea that here Greek would meet Greek, and after the tug-of-war the cowbird would be among those not present. Perhaps in the falling out both would fall out, at which most of us who love birds would not grumble. SOME CROWS I HAVE KNOWN Already the robins that piped such a deafening morning chorus all about us last June are swirling in great flocks about the Florida everglades, getting up a Christmas spirit by filling their crops with holly berries and practicing spring songs, and perhaps a little spring love-making in the waxy shadows of the mistletoe bough.