THE SLEEP OF BIRDS 153 



with bended knees, without any effort being firmly 

 locked to its roost. 



Among the small birds that cuddle for warmth in the 

 night are the wrens, many of whom will crowd into one 

 hole in a thatched roof to sleep. It is as if they 

 remembered the warmth and comfort that was theirs 

 when, as baby birds, they cuddled together in the 

 nest. We watched once a family party of young wrens 

 taking their first flight. The midget birds headed 

 directly for a dense laurel bush near the nest, and 

 there some time later we found them all cuddled on a 

 twig, as if trying to make-believe they were still in 

 their deep, warm cradle. 



When young birds can fly, but still roost at night 

 in the nest where they were born, their mothers send 

 them to bed, at the proper time, in much the same 

 way as human mothers pack off their youngsters and 

 tuck them up for the night. In summer-time we 

 often see swifts, swallows, and martins chasing their 

 little ones, with loud cries, to the nests beneath the 

 eaves. From nests where young martins sleep there 

 arises through the night at intervals a most curious 

 chattering, sing-song sound as if the birds are 

 crooning themselves to sleep with a lullaby. 



An old writer gives an amusing account of a swallow 

 putting her babies to bed. As they began to grow up 

 they filled the nest, and the mother bird then took 

 to roosting in an elder bush near by. Every evening 

 she could be seen mustering her children, and then 

 she would point out to them their places in the nest 

 for the night, always giving them a good lecture 

 before they went to sleep. " She appeared," he 

 relates, " to count them over and over again, and 

 did not close an eye until the little folk were fast 

 asleep." She was always the first to awake, and 



