OUR RARER BIRDS 



The Jay and most birds of the Crow tribe, particularly 

 the Magpie, whose well-made and intricately woven nest is 

 a masterpiece of nest-building art, have powerful and some- 

 what clumsy bills and feet ; yet we know their nests can 

 compare favourably with those of any other class of birds. 

 ]\Iany of the clumsy-billed Gulls with webbed feet make well- 

 made nests ; as also do certain of the Birds of Prey, the Heron, 

 the Coot, the Moorhen, the Grebes, the Ducks, and the Swans, 

 — nests that exhibit the same 'princiijles as those of the 

 smaller birds, but of course carried out on a much larger scale. 

 Again, what difference is there between the nest-building 

 tools of the Sparrow-hawk and the Kestrel? None whatever; 

 yet the one builds a fairly-made nest, and the other never 

 makes a nest at all, and rears its young either in the deserted 

 nests of other birds or on the ledges of the beetling cliffs, on 

 no other resting-place than the bare rocks or the refuse of its 

 food. The Woodpeckers, the Kingfisher, the Starling, and some 

 times the Jackdaw, well provided with the requisite appliances 

 for building an elaborate nest, rear their young in structures 

 poorly fabricated in the holes of trees, rocks, banks, or 

 buildings, or do not make a nest at all. From the above- 

 mentioned facts I think that we are perfectly justified in 

 drawing the inference that birds are in no way influenced by 

 the appliances they possess in building their nests. We 

 have seen that birds are capable, quite irrespective of the 

 form of their bills and feet, of making elaborate nests of 

 matchless beauty, or poorly fabricated and very plain in 

 appearance, respectively, and according to circumstances ; 

 and we may therefore rest assured that the nest-building 

 capabilities of birds are not in any way subordinate to their 

 natural appliances or tools for making their nests, but are 

 regulated by, and subordinate to, the various conditions under 

 which their young are produced, and especially by the colour 

 of the egors. 



