December 



chitecture, are a most curious and interesting 

 study by itself. They vary in size from the 

 eagle's rude structure, five feet across, down to 

 the daintiest of all, the humming-bird's, only 

 an inch and a half in diameter. They are lo- 

 cated in all sorts of places. Those of the bank 

 swallow and belted kingfisher are subterran- 

 ean, at the end of long excavations in sand- 

 banks, from one to several feet below the sur- 

 face. Sparrows build on the ground ; so do 

 night-hawks and many water-fowl. To find 

 the nests of thrushes and many of the warblers, 

 we must look a few feet above the ground, in 

 bushes and trees. Crows nest in the tops of 

 tall trees, and inaccessible cliffs several hundred 

 feet high are fittingly the home of many of the 

 hawks and eagles. Woodpeckers make cavi- 

 ties from one to two feet in depth in trees, 

 and chickadees and nuthatches, with the same 

 proclivity as the woodpecker, but without its 

 strength, will sometimes take the abandoned 

 nests of the latter, and sometimes make their 

 own excavations in a rotten stump where the 

 wood is soft. Swifts build in chimneys, barn 

 swallows under the eaves of outbuildings. 

 Some species choose the deepest woods, and 

 others the orchard and the wayside. In the 



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