One season a pair of them built a nest in a Norway Spruce that stood
amid a dense growth of other ornamental trees near a large unoccupied
house. They sat down amid plenty. The wolf established himself in
the fold. The many birds--robins, thrushes, finches, vireos, pewees--
that seek the vicinity of dwellings (especially of these large country
residences with their many trees and park-like grounds), for the
greater safety of their eggs and young, were the easy and convenient
victims of these robbers. They plundered right and left, and were not
disturbed till their young were nearly fledged, when some boys, who had
long before marked them as their prize, rifled the nest.
The song-birds nearly all build low; their cradle is not upon the
tree-top. It is only birds of prey that fear danger from below more
than from above, and that seek the higher branches for their nests.
A line five feet from the ground would run above more than half the
nests, and one ten feet would bound more than three fourths of them.
It is only the oriole and the wood pewee that, as a rule, go higher
than this.
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