PERCHING BIRDS. 167 
over the door or windows, the others being left unmo- 
lested. The latter were always retenanted in the spring 
after receiving needful repairs, and new ones would be 
‘built on the foundations of the old ones, or occasionally 
a fresh site would be selected. 
In my notice of the sparrow I have mentioned their 
fondness for taking possession of a martin’s nest during 
their temporary absence. The martins were alwaysgreatly 
distressed by the aggression, flying wildly to and fro, and 
by their cries of alarm bringing a large number of their 
fellows to the rescue; but no active measures were 
taken, they contenting themselves by incessantly flying 
up to the entrance of the nest and giving utterance to 
their strong indignation—which, as a faithful chronicler, 
I am bound to say appeared to be entirely disregarded 
by the sparrow. Rarely has a summer passed without 
this scene being repeated two or three times in the same 
group of nests; and being just opposite to my own win- 
dows, it afforded me a great fund of amusement. 
In 1835 a pair of martins built their nest under the 
eaves of a house at Sutton, a village a few miles distant ; 
but during a violent thunderstorm it was partly 
demolished, and two young unfledged birds fell from it 
to the ground, but were apparently uninjured. The 
owner of the house, with great humanity, directed one 
of his men to procure a ladder; a board was placed 
under the nest, and secured by a couple of iron holdfasts, 
and the nest was then repaired with clay as well as it 
could be, a little cotton wool added to make good the 
lining. When this was done, the two young ones were 
replaced in the nest; but the most extraordinary part 
was that the parent bird, which was in the nest at the 
time part of it fell, remained sitting in the uninjured 
