BIRDS'-NESTS. 125 



fongh-winged swallow builds in the wall and in old 

 Btone heaps, and I have seen the robin build in simi- 

 lar localities. Others have found its nest in old, aban- 

 doned wells. The house wren will build in anything 

 that has an accessible cavity, from an old boot to u 

 bombshell. A pair of them once persisted in build- 

 ing their nest in the top of a certain pump-tree, get- 

 ing in through the opening above the handle. The 

 pump being in daily use, the nest was destroyed more 

 than a score of times. This jealous little wretch has 

 the wise forethought, when the box in which he 

 builds contains two compartments, to fill up one of 

 them, so as to avoid the risk of troublesome neigh- 

 bors. 



The less skillful builders sometimes depart from 

 their usual habit, and take up with the abandoned 

 nest of some other species. The blue jay now and 

 then lays in an old crow's-nest or cuckoo's-nest. The 

 crow-blackbird, seized with a fit of indolence, drops 

 its eggs in the cavity of a decayed branch. I heard 

 of a cuckoo that dispossessed a robin of its nest ; of 

 another that set a blue jay adrift. Large, loose 

 structures, like the nests of the osprey and certain 

 of the herons, have been found with half a dozen 

 nests of the blackbird set in the outer edges, like so 

 many parasites, or, as Audubon says, like the retain- 

 ers about the rude court of a feudal baron. 



The same birds breeding in a southern climate 

 construct far less elaborate nests than when breeding 

 4ii a northern climate. Certain species of water -fowl 



