$2 Singular Nidification in Birds. 



pursuit as hopeless, the wind having freshened, and made the 

 swell rather too heavy for an open boat ; the tide, too, was 

 quite out, and the rocky bottom occasionally peeped up all 

 round us in the hollows of the sea, looking very black and 

 disagreeable. Two of us took a spell at the oar, by turns, 

 with the fishermen, and worked away like Britons, till a noble 

 swell laid us high and dry on the shingles at Freshwater. 



I am, Sir, yours, &c. 

 Godalming, Sept. 16. 1832. Rusticus. 



Art. V. Instances of singular Nidification in Birds. By the 

 Rev. W. T. Bree, M.A. 



" Heteroclita sunto." 



" Let them be called heteroclites." 



Gilbert White remarks (Letter 16. to Daines Barrington) 

 that " birds, in general, are wise in their choice of situation " 

 [for building their nests]. It may be added, too, that they 

 are, for the most part, tolerably uniform in their selection. 

 Every schoolboy knows the usual and likely places to find this 

 or that bird's nest; and when a nest of any kind is found, 

 though at the time it may be destitute of eggs, he is seldom at 

 a loss in deciding, from its structure and location, to what 

 species it belongs. There is no rule, however, without its 

 exceptions; and, accordingly, instances occur not unfrequently, 

 in which the little architects deviate from their usual course, 

 by infringing one or both of the above rules, and evincing 

 neither wisdom nor uniformity in their choice.* Foremost, 

 perhaps, and most conspicuous in the catalogue of hetero- 

 clites, stands the small titmouse or bluecap (Parus caeruleus). 

 Indeed, the instances of this bird's eccentricity in the affair of 

 nidification are so numerous, that, with it, the exception 

 almost becomes the rule. Notwithstanding the many examples 

 of the kind already recorded in this Magazine, I cannot 

 forbear adding to them one which fell under my own observ- 

 ation when a boy ; though it is by no means so remarkable 

 as the one related by Scolopax Rusticola (Vol. V. p. 289.), 

 of the bird's taking up its quarters, for two years together, 



* White mentions a swallow that " built, for two years together, on the 

 handles of a pair of garden-shears, that were stuck up against the boards in an 

 out-house, and therefore must have her nest spoiled whenever that imple- 

 ment was wanted ; and, what is stranger still, another bird of the same 

 species built its nest on the wings and body of an owl that happened by 

 accident to hang dead and dry from the rafter of a barn." — In Letter 18. 

 to Daines Barrington. 



