Such herculean efforts as the foregoing are certainly deserving of success. Events justify the thought. A few hours at most, and his song receives a response. Aroused from her absorption, his true love appears. The scenes now enacted are ludicrous in the extreme. He flies about her, utters a few syllables of affection, and at length settles down by her side. His whole expression is one of intense delight. While her lord is thus fairly beside himself with joy, she is of a passive disposition. To one who is not experienced in matters pertaining to bird-life, her conduct would seem to betoken lukewarmness. But it is only the coyness of a modest female. Having won his prize, the happy husband leads the way into some secluded spot, where he lays before her his plans for the future. She immediately assents to them, and soon the pair are found beating in and out of the bushes for a home-spot. As many as two days are often spent in these delightful pilgrimages. At length, one is discovered which combines the essentialities, and a house is erected. In woods that are seldom desecrated by the polluting touch of wicked man, there is manifest but little tendency to concealment. Not so in fields which adjoin his retreats. Here the greatest caution is observed, the nest being built in some almost impenetrable bramble-patch, and so placed as to be out of reach of the keenest vigilance. If discovered in such a place, it is more the result of chance than good management, and not through any fault of the birds. We have found it often within a forked twig of the common laurel, more frequently in brier-bushes, and not uncommonly in a young oak, where scores of them are growing thickly together.
The nest is from three to four days in building, through the steady, persevering efforts of the architects. In texture it is rather loose, and is made almost exclusively of strips of bark, dry leaves and stems of grasses. In some instances the ribbons of bark are from one-half to three-fourths of an inch in width, and nearly nine inches in length. Such being the exterior fabric, the inner is composed of a thick lining of roots, rather compactly interwoven, and gradually diminishing in size towards the centre. There is a difference in the composing substances observable in nests from the most diverse localities. Some are built of leaves on the outside, loosely aggregated and held together by the small and nearly vertical branches between which they are placed. Within, there is a profusion of grape-vine bark, small sticks, stems of grasses, and a lining of beech-leaves. In external diameter the nest varies from four and a half to five inches, and has a height of about two and a half inches. The cavity is about three inches wide, and the depth one and three-fourths.