174 JUNGLE FOLK 



part of the entrance with mud " consolidated with some 

 viscid seed of a parasitical plant." 



The hornbills close up the greater part of the orifice 

 of the hole in which they nest with their droppings 

 mixed with a little earth. 



Hume informs us the rufous-fronted wren-warbler 

 (Franklinia buchanani) utilises a fungus as its cement. 

 " In all the nests that I have seen," he writes, " the 

 egg-cavity has been lined with something very soft. 

 In many of the nests the lining is composed of soft, 

 felt-like pieces of some dull salmon-coloured fungus, 

 with which the whole interior is closely plastered." 



The cement which is most commonly used is cobweb. 

 I do not think that I am exaggerating when I say that 

 cobweb enters extensively into the structure of the 

 nests of more than one hundred species of Indian birds. 

 What birds would do without our friend the spider 

 I cannot imagine. 



The nest of some birds is literally a house of cobwebs. 

 The beautiful white-browed fan-tail fly-catcher {Rhipi- 

 dura alhifrontata) is a case in point. Its nursery is so 

 thickly plastered with cobweb as to sometimes look 

 quite white. It is a tiny cup that rests on a branch of a 

 bush or small tree, and is composed of fine twigs and 

 roots, which are cemented to the supporting branch 

 and to one another by cobweb. This the bird takes 

 from the webs of those trap-door spiders which weave 

 large nets on the ground. 



Utterly regardless of the feelings of the possessor 

 of the web, the fly-catcher takes beakful after beakful 

 of it, and smears it over the part of the branch on which 



