THE MARTINS 



91 



in brickyards on the edge of the marshland, returning year 

 after year to the same holes. These dark tunnels they have 

 burrowed deep into the bank, where they place their floating 

 basket-like nest of fowls' feathers, upon which the milk-white 

 eggs, known to every schoolboy, are placed and the young 

 hatched, and where the young are fed on flies and moths 

 till they are pretty strong on the wing, when they go in a 

 body to the Broad, and all day long from dawn to sundown 

 you may see them skimming just over the reed during rain or 

 thunder-squall. In the still oppressive noontide or at dusk or 

 early dawn, it is always the same, there they are always hawk- 

 ing and twittering, the old feeding the young on the wing, 

 and consuming enormous numbers of flies ; for these birds 

 are far more numerous over the Broadlands than either the 

 swallow or house-martin, as may be seen when they congre- 

 gate in large flocks of thousands, sitting by the sounding 

 sea, or lining miles of bending telegraph wire, or covering 

 the reed or gladen beds preparatory to starting forth ; and as 

 they fly up, on the start, darkening the air, it is difficult to 

 conceive how they do not dash against each other, so black 

 is the flock. 



SAND-MARTINS AND BUKROWS. 



