142 ErJIDS'-NESTS. 



barn. A friend tells me of a pair of barn 

 swallows which, taking a fanciful turn, sad- 

 dled their nest in the loop of a rope that was 

 pendent from a peg in the peak, and liked 

 it so well that they repeated the experiment 

 next year. I have known the social sparrow, 

 or "hair bird," to build under a shed, in 

 a tuft of hay that hung down, through the 

 loose flooring, from the mow above. It 

 usually contents itself with half a dozen 

 stalks of dry grass and a few long hairs from 

 a cow's tail, loosely arranged on the branch 

 of an apple-tree. The rough-winged swal- 

 low builds in the wall and in old stone heaps, 

 and I have seen the robin build in similar 

 localities. Others have found its nest in old, 

 abandoned wells. The house wren will build 

 in anything that has an accessible cavity, 

 from an old boot to a bombshell. A pair of 

 them once persisted in building their nest in 

 the top of a certain pump-tree, getting in 

 through the opening above the handle. The 

 pump being in daily use, the nest was de- 

 stroyed more than a score of times. This 

 jealous little wretch has the wise forethought, 

 when the box in which he builds contains 

 two compartments, to fill up one of them, so 

 as to avoid the risk of troublesome neigh- 

 bors. 



