106 WAKE-ROBIN 



Though generally regular in their habits and 

 instincts, yet the birds sometimes seem as whimsi- 

 cal and capricious as superior beings. One is not 

 safe, for instance, in making any absolute assertion 

 as to their place or mode of building. Ground- 

 builders often get up into a bush, and tree-builders 

 sometimes get upon the ground or into a tussock 

 of grass. The song sparrow, which is a ground- 

 builder, has been known to build in the knothole 

 of a fence rail; and a chimney swallow once got 

 tired of soot and smoke, and fastened its nest on a 

 rafter in a hay barn. A friend tells me of a pair 

 of barn swallows which, taking a fanciful turn, 

 saddled their nest in the loop of a rope that was 

 pendent from a peg in the peak, and liked it so 

 well that they repeated the experiment next year. 

 I have known the social sparrow, or "hairbird," to 

 build under a shed, in a tuft of hay that hung 

 down, through the loose flooring, from the mow 

 above. It usually contents itself with half a dozen 

 stalks of dry grass and a few long hairs from a cow's 

 tail loosely arranged on the branch of an apple-tree. 

 The rough- winged swallow builds in the wall and 

 in old stone-heaps, and I have seen the robin build 

 in similar localities. Others have found its nest in 

 old, abandoned wells. The house wren will build 

 in anything that has an accessible cavity, from an 

 old boot to a bombshell. A pair of them once per- 

 sisted in building their nest in the top of a certain 

 pump-tree, getting in through the opening above 

 the handle. The pump being in daily use, the nest 



