The nest of the Hooded Warbler is usually built in low shrubs, sometimes but a few inches from the ground and seldom higher than two feet. It is constructed of fine rootlets, and fibers of bark compactly interwoven with leaves, fine grass and hair. It is lined with grass, hair and feathers. The eggs, which are usually five in number, are white, or nearly white, in color, with red or brownish spots near the larger end. They are nearly three-fourths of an inch in length, and a little over one-half of an inch in their greatest diameter.
Three years or more are required for the development of the fully adult plumage. The throat of the female, though black, is not as pure a black as that of the male, and it is not so extensive or as well defined.
One is surprised at the wonderful vitality to be found in an egg. The following incident, almost incredible as it seems, is an absolute fact.
Mrs. Jane, very fond of raising select breeds of chickens, put a setting of fine Brahma eggs under what she considered an absolutely trustworthy Biddy,—but, alas! Biddy proved unstable, like many another biped, and went off in a few days, leaving her nest and rather costly contents to the mercy of the elements.
Mrs. Jane, in three or four days, discovered the abandoned domicile, and, determined not to be outdone by any such maneuver on the part of Biddy, proposed to show her that Brahma chickens could be developed without the assistance of any old hen.
So, not having an incubator of any approved manufacture, she proceeded to make one. She secured a large bread pan to hold the water, a small wooden pail to hold the eggs, which were wrapped in warm flannel, and a good kerosene lamp, which was placed under the pan holding the water and then lighted.
The bucket containing the eggs was then placed in the pan of water and the whole apparatus left in a quiet bedroom.
Oh, how Mr. Jane and the boys and the neighbors twitted Mrs. Jane about wasting coal oil and time in keeping those eggs warm! But, behold! in a little over two weeks, one morning a shell was chipped, at noon another, and by the next morning four pert little downy fellows occupied the bottom of the bucket, with seven unhatched eggs.
Those chickens grew faster than almost any chickens ever known. They were never anything but tame, and the most active of the four, who bears the appropriate name of Theodore Roosevelt, allows any one to pick him up and fondle him, but is ready to fight with anything in the poultry yard—big chicken, little chicken, the skye terrier, the cat or anything else that is or might be in his way. Mrs. Jane says she never was sorry for her experiment but once, and that is all the time.