208 



THE SAND-MARTIN. 



as early as the 20th of March that year, and at Allanton Bridge 

 on the 24th. Like the others, they fly about for a week before 

 beginning the cares of married life, fulfilling the natural duties 

 they came for — preparing a home for the coming brood in holes 

 laboriously dug out of the face of the brae with their short 

 little bills, and pierced from 18 to 54 inches in. They occupy 

 their old cells, or begin to burrow new ones ; and it is interest- 

 ing to watch them clinging to the brae with their claws about 

 60 feet up, steadying themselves by their tails. They begin by 

 pricking a small hole, which they enlarge by moving their shut 

 bills round and edging off the sand until they get room to stand 

 on ; then push out the loose sand or gravel with their feet until 

 a sufficient depth is reached — generally from 2 to 3 feet, slop- 

 ing upwards, at the end of which the nest is formed by 

 scooping out the sand large enough to hold it, about 6 inches in 

 diameter, while the passage is from 3 to 4. Both male and 

 female work like little Trojans, or industrious man and wife 

 working together, when the marriage is, like the sand-martin's, 

 one of love — hence mutual interest. The hole is not always 

 straight in, but varied, to evade some hard part of the brae. 

 Sometimes when a stone intervenes it is abandoned, and they 

 begin their labours afresh. The nest is composed of dry grass 

 and grass roots, profusely lined with feathers after the eggs are 

 laid ; even when making it, like the red-fronted swallow and 

 house-martin, the sand-martin treads, or copulates, in it, as the 

 swift does the same duty on wing — neither of them giving the 

 rueful cause of sorrow (through the unnatural conduct of his 

 daughters), which made poor mad King Lear question the sin 

 of adultery. 



" Die for adultery ? No ! 

 The wren goes to 't, and the small gilded fly 

 Does lecher in my sight. 



Let copulation thrive, for Gloster's bastard son 

 Was kinder to his father, than my daughters 

 Got 'tween the lawful sheets." 



Be that as it may. 



They lay five, sometimes six, pure white eggs, which, when 

 fresh, seem pink by the yolk, as they are transparent. On the 

 23rd of May 1858, I dug out and inspected three nests at 

 Martin's Point, at the estuary of the river Eden. One had 

 three, another four, and the other five eggs — the latter deep- 

 sitten. One was in a small hole 3 inches diameter, 4 feet up 

 from the beach and 18 inches into the bank. The other two 

 were 8 feet from the beach — one of them 4 feet 6 inches, the 



