

THE NATURAL HISTORY OF NESTS 



swung so loosely that no snake could possibly 

 enter ; the lining may be made like a bed of down : 

 thus the old Scotch ornithologist MacGillivray 

 counted 2,379 feathers in the nest of the long-tailed 

 tit. In the nest of the common thrush, which is 

 plastered internally with rotten wood mixed with 

 dung, or in the nest of the mistle-thrush, which 

 has a considerable foundation of mud, we have 

 instances of the numerous connecting types between 

 hard-built and felt-work nests. The tailor-birds 

 make a thread of vegetable fibre, and sew together 

 the edges of a couple of leaves ; the fantail warbler 

 also uses a thread knotted at the end to bind 

 grass -stems into a canopy over its nest. 



The series of nests might be greatly prolonged, 

 but we must bring it to a close with a reference to 

 what is perhaps the most extraordinary of all nests 

 that of the sea -swift. This bird occurs in great 

 numbers in Indian and Australian regions, and 

 usually nests socially in caves, both by the sea and 

 among the mountains. The peculiarity of the 

 nest the well-known " edible bird's-nest " is that 

 it normally consists of the dried juice of the salivary 

 glands. When the first nest has been gathered, 

 the bird sometimes builds an inferior type of nest, 

 including a considerable quantity of vegetable 

 matter glued together with the hardened salivary 

 juice. 



So we see that there is a long inclined plane from 

 no nest at all to the most elaborate nest, but the 

 important fact is that the character of the nest is 

 peculiar to each particular kind of bird. Each 



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