140 COMMON BIRDS OF AN INDIAN GARDEN 



showers. Where a nest is set very low down in a 

 shrub, the owners in approaching it usually descend 

 to the grass or weeds below and creep up thence 

 to the entrance. When sitting they lie very close, 

 and, when any one approaches the nest, are usually 

 content to thrust out their long slender beaks and 

 little brown heads in anxious enquiry without flying 

 off until their house is actually touched or shaken. 



The leaves used in the construction of the nests 

 generally wilt and die very rapidly although they 

 do not seem to have been injured in any way save 

 by the minute perforations through which the 

 stitches are passed. It must have been owing to 

 some imperfect account of this fact that Pennant 

 was led to affirm that "the bird picks up a dead 

 leaf, and, surprising to relate, sews it to the side 

 of a living one." A like result takes place in the 

 case of the leafy structures of some social spiders 

 and arboreal ants. It is probably due to an inter- 

 ference with the free access of air to the tissues, 

 owing to the orifices of the stomata being choked 

 up by the lining of the nests of the birds and the 

 fine layers of web spread over the surface of the 

 inferior epidermis by the ants and spiders. 



After the young birds have left the nest, they 

 are for some time sedulously attended by their 

 parents, and the parties of little brown creatures 

 are very attractive as they travel around among the 

 shrubs and weeds. 



