BIRDS' NESTS 



" British Birds":" This bird also brought fresh 

 leaves to the nest occasionally and dropped them 

 in the cup of the nest. The curious thing was that 

 she always brought elm leaves, and there was no 

 elm tree within a hundred yards, the nest being in an 

 oakwood and actually built in an oak. Young 

 ash, poplar, lime and horn-beam lay between the 

 nearest elm. The wood is more than 60 acres in 

 extent, and I do not think there are half a dozen 

 elms in it. The selection of elm leaves is the 

 more curious as the hawk usually builds the greater 

 part of the nest of the same wood as the tree in 

 which the nest is placed." 



At times birds will use substances in nest-building 

 not generally adopted by their kind, mainly, it may 

 be, because a supply of the material chances to be 

 at hand. We remember a brambling's nest in 

 Norway largely composed of chips made by the 

 wood-cutters working close at hand and Mr. Jaspei 

 Atkinson describes a willow-wren's nest built in 

 the midst of a hen-run, when the birds had woven 

 in so many feathers of the poultry as to render it 

 practically m visible. 



Swallow's Change of Habit. 



The swallow appears to be a bird that has changed 

 its habit of nesting. It is clear that in Gilbert 

 White's day — namely about 1770 — the chimney- 

 stack was the usual situation of the swallow's nest, 

 and that from this habit the familiar name chimney- 

 swallow was derived. 



White is circumstantial in his account comparing 

 the custom of the swallow in Great Britain with its 

 congeners in other countries. In Sweden, he 

 writes, she builds in barns and is called the " Cada 

 Swala " the barn-swallow. 



He writes fuither ' ' Here and there a bird may 

 affect some odd peculiar place, as we have known a 



33 



