On the whole, there seems to be a system of Women’s Rights prevailing among the birds, which, contemplated from the standpoint of the male, is quite admirable.  In almost all cases of joint interest, the female bird is the most active.  She determines the site of the nest, and is usually the most absorbed in its construction.  Generally, she is more vigilant in caring for the young, and manifests the most concern when danger threatens.  Hour after hour I have seen the mother of a brood of blue grossbeaks pass from the nearest meadow to the tree that held her nest, with a cricket or grasshopper in her bill, while her better-dressed half was singing serenely on a distant tree or pursuing his pleasure amid the branches.

Yet among the majority of our song birds, the male is most conspicuous both by his color and manners and by his song, and is to that extent a shield to the female.  It is thought that the female is humbler clad for her better concealment during incubation.  But this is not satisfactory, as in some cases she is relieved from time to time by the male.  In the case of the domestic dove, for instance, promptly at mid-day the cock is found upon the nest.  I should say that the dull or neutral tints of the female were a provision of nature for her greater safety at all times, as her life is far more precious to the species than that of the male.  The indispensable office of the male reduces itself to little more than a moment of time, while that of his mate extends over days and weeks, if not months.

In migrating northward, the males precede the females by eight or ten days; returning in the fall, the females and young precede the males by about the same time.

[Illustration:  NEST OF THE CHICADEE.]

After the woodpeckers have abandoned their nests, or rather chambers, which they do after the first season, their cousins, the nut-hatches, chickadees, and brown creepers, fall heir to them.  These birds, especially the creepers and nut-hatches, have many of the habits of the picidae, but lack their powers of bill, and so are unable to excavate a nest for themselves.  Their habitation, therefore, is always second-hand.  But each species carries in some soft material of various kinds, or, in other words, furnishes the tenement to its liking.  The chickadee arranges in the bottom of the cavity a little mat of a light, felt-like substance, which looks as if it came from the hatter’s, but which is probably the work of numerous worms or caterpillars.  On this soft lining the female deposits six white eggs.

I recently discovered one of these nests in a most interesting situation.  The tree containing it, a variety of the wild cherry, stood upon the brink of the bald summit of a high mountain.  Gray, time-worn rocks lay piled loosely about, or overtoppled the just visible by-ways of the red fox.  The trees had a half-scared look, and that indescribable wildness which lurks about the tops of all remote mountains possessed the place.  Standing there, I looked down upon the back of the red-tailed hawk as he flew out over the earth beneath me.  Following him, my eye also took in farms, and settlements, and villages, and other mountain ranges that grew blue in the distance.