CAPRICE ABOUT THE NESTS. 73 



unfinished. These industrious artificers are at 

 their labours in the long days before four in the 

 morning; when they fix their materials, they 

 plaster them on with their chins, moving their 

 heads with a quick vibratory motion." The Rev. 

 Leonard Jenyns has observed the same apparent 

 caprice in the martins, in commencing and leaving 

 unfinished various nests. He says, that "more 

 particularly towards the close of the breeding 

 season, these birds have the habit of flying up 

 against the walls of buildings just below the eaves, 

 and daubing them with mud, apparently without 

 any intention of constructing a nest. These 

 patches of dirt are not applied with any regularity, 

 but may be seen sticking to the brick-work at 

 intervals of two or three inches all along the front 

 of the building. In some states of the weather, 

 particularly our damp cloudy days, especially if 

 also warm, they seem to pursue this singular 

 labour with great assiduity. Occasionally twenty 

 or thirty martins will be busily engaged in this 

 manner from morning till night." Mr. Jenyns 

 thinks it something more than an instance of their 

 "caprice in fixing on a nesting place," alluded 

 to in the former part of this paragraph by White, 



