HIRUNDU RIPARIA. 



209 



other 4 feet 2 inches, dug into the bank. These two were 6 

 inches in diameter at the entrance, but narrowed as they went 

 in. They were too far in to reach with my hand, so I dug 

 from the top. The nests sloped up to within 9 inches of the 

 surface. Both of the martins were in one of the holes (the 

 one with three eggs). They did not run far back, but kept 

 near the entrance ready to fly out. I put my hand on the hole 

 and caught one of them trying to get out, but let it away. 

 They had likely been breeding in the hole. The nests were 

 back at the end of the holes, enlarged to hold them. From 

 what I saw I am convinced they do not put in the feathers 

 until all the eggs are laid and the bird begun to sit, for the two 

 with three and four eggs had none (except one or two mingled 

 with the dry grass), while the one with five eggs was filled 

 with large feathers of the shielduck, eider, and mallard, with 

 some of the gull's. I counted 68 feathers in this nest, 

 averaging 3 J inches long ; some of them 5 inches. I tried 

 other five holes, three of which had nests ; the other two were 

 only 16 inches in, and either abandoned or only making. The 

 most of the holes I saw had nests, but, as I had got all the 

 information I wanted, I did not disturb the bus}^ little colony 

 further. Next year I got two nests near the same place, in a 

 bank not 4 feet high, and only 3 feet up from the beach. I 

 have got them at the East Sands only 1 foot from the sloping 

 sandy brae. Thus we have had sand-martins breeding in the 

 vicinity of St Andrews in holes from 3 to 60 feet up from the 

 sea beach. Inland, they select quarries, sand pits, or river 

 banks for the same purpose, as, like the flies, they are widely 

 dispersed over Britain, and like the rest of the swallow kind, 

 fulfil an important mission in the wise economy of Nature by 

 keeping in due bounds the balance of insect life, for one brood 

 of martins destroy more then 6,000 flies daily. As a proof of 

 the viscid saliva, and the number of flies they carry in their 

 mouth at one time, I have counted no less than 20 flies taken 

 from the mouth of one shot for the purpose. Unlike the house- 

 martin, the sand-martin does not seek the neighbourhood of 

 man, hence never seen in his streets, but often seen beside him 

 when angling for trout. The other day when an angler was 

 fishing in the river a martin seized the fly, and was struggling 

 in vain to free inself from the hook. As the bird was of less 

 use than a fish, he unhooked and let it away. There is an 

 old proverb that the wild goose and the swallow never meet, 

 which is scarcely correct, for on the 26th of September 1891 



