house was so pleased with its success that he sent me also a martin house. It is four stories high and has twenty-six rooms. Around each story are porches, some of them several inches wide.
It pleases birds to have their houses look, before they occupy them, as if they had been out in all sorts of weather. So, for several weeks before this martin house was set up, it lay out in the yard to be rained and snowed on.
One cold March day a purple bird came in at my window. He perched on picture frames, twittered a little, and went out again. According to the bird books, my little visitor was a purple martin. Maybe he had seen the martin house on the lawn, and came to ask me to put it up. Anyway, the next day it was mounted in the farthest corner of the garden. For, according to the directions that came with the house, martins want their houses to be fifty feet away from any building or tree, and on a pole at least sixteen feet high.
In early April another martin came; or maybe it was the same one, returning to see whether the house had been put up. Martins always send one of their number ahead to look up a house for them. He is called a scout. This martin scout perched on the wires nearby, and tried repeatedly to alight on one of the porches of the martin house. But some English sparrows were there; they also wanted that house. Every time the scout went near, these
