Robin will put on a new coat of mud, using her pretty breast for a trowel. Then she will go to some pool, take a bath, make herself tidy after her dirty work, and lay four or five eggs of robin's egg blue.
Bluebirds will use the same hole in an apple or maple tree, or a fence post, year after year, if they find it vacant. Or they will use a woodpecker's hole, or a clever bark cylinder of a nest if you put one up. Bluebirds are not builders. They put a scanty lining of weeds, grass or feathers in the best hole they can find, and Mama Bluebird lays from four to six eggs a little paler than the robin's. The mocking bird that came into the doctor's garden built a loose, round nest of crooked twigs lined with grass, rags, strings and moss, in a branch of a pine tree, only ten feet from the ground. Its eggs were a pale green, delicately spotted.
Most of the other thrushes—the brown and hermit thrush and the cat-bird, nest on or near the ground. The nests are clumsily made of roots, bark, sticks and leaves, rags and paper. The eggs of the brown thrush or thrasher, are cream colored, speckled with brown, like the papa's own pretty breast. The cat-bird's eggs are a beautiful blue-green. You may easily mistake the nests of the brown thrush and the song-sparrow. Both build on the ground, under low bushes, and of rough materials. But the song-sparrow's nest is more thickly lined with soft hair and feathers.
You wouldn't expect as wild and silent a bird as the scarlet tanager, to build a nest ten feet from the ground, at the end of the limb of a wild crab-apple tree, would you? It is made of twigs, roots and shredded bark, loosely woven and lined with soft fibres. The eggs are a dull white or greenish blue, spotted with brown and violet, something like a blackbird's but more thickly spotted on the blunt ends.
The king-bird, too, builds a big, clumsy nest in an orchard tree or maple, right out in plain sight. But he is ready to defend it with much bustle and talk, telling everyone that this is his castle and no visitors are welcome. The jaybird builds a loose nest, too, but in a high branch. And he doesn't disdain to use the deserted nest of a crow. That shows his good sense, for the crow flies high and makes a stout nest of sticks and all sorts of things. He stuffs all the cracks with moss, and he plasters it outside with mud so it is often good for a couple of seasons. Besides, he lines it thickly with horse hair, moss and wool, for little crow babies are perfectly naked.
