8o BIRD WORLD. 



nests. The Osprey, or Fishhawk, uses plenty of 

 material but not much skill, and as he adds to his 

 nest each year, it often becomes a huge pile, big 

 enough to fill a wagon. Such a Fishhawk's nest is 

 shown in Fig. 12. 



Before I describe the more wonderful woven struc- 

 ture which the word nest calls up to our minds, let me 

 speak of two more styles of building, — the holes in 

 sand or wood, and the plastered nests of mud. 



The woodpecker's chisel enables him to make a 

 hole to order where he wants it, but many other birds, 

 such as Bluebirds and owls, love the natural hollows 

 in decayed limbs. 



The birds that live in holes in the earth generally 

 choose sand ; you can imagine why they prefer it to 

 clay; and river banks give them a chance to build 

 horizontally rather than perpendicularly. 



What advantage is this to them } 



One bird, the Burrowing Owl, digs out a long, 

 winding passage underground, at the end of which 

 he has a chamber for his nest. 



The mud nests, or plastered nests, are built of wet 

 mud, taken in the bird's bill and stuck to rocks or 

 walls of houses. Eave Swallows build a nest shaped 

 something like a bottle, all of grains of mud. These 

 birds gather about mud puddles in May, dipping in 

 their bills, fluttering, twittering, lighting, and flying 



