340 BIRDS OF NORFOLK. 



Their breeding habits are too well known to every 

 ordinary observer to need much, description, but 

 wherever the side of a railway cutting, or the declivity of 

 a chalk, gravel, or sand pit, presents a favourable surface 

 to be operated upon by their little bills, these busy 

 miners excavate for themselves a home, living sociably 

 enough in numerous colonies, and the apertures of their 

 nest-holes, in some cases, so close together as almost to 

 run one into the other. As a rule, the sites selected for 

 nesting purposes are in close vicinity to a river or 

 smaller stream, but I have occasionally found them 

 breeding at a considerable distance from water of any 

 kind. Unless the position itself has peculiar attractions, 

 they do not, like their kindred species, seek the neigh- 

 bourhood of man, but prefer the open country away 

 from all habitations, and they also nest by hundreds in 

 the face of our lofty sand cliffs, facing the sea. In the 

 vicinity of Cromer, on either side of the town, their 

 nest-holes are placed about two feet from the summit of 

 the cliff, and for the most part exactly on the same 

 level, that strata being no doubt most easily worked, 

 and they also breed in the carstone formation, adjoining 

 the chalk, in the less extensive but most remarkable 

 range of cliffs at Hunstanton, near Lynn. In such 

 positions, from the abruptness of the precipice and the 

 distance below the surface at which their borings 

 are made, the nests are rarely disturbed except by the 

 sparrows, who will occasionally take unlawful posses- 



along the surface of the brook, gliding from side to side, deviating 

 by starts, now sweeping over the bank, wheeling across the road, 

 making an excursion over the cornfield, then rising perpendicularly, 

 slanting away down the wind, fluttering among the spikes of the 

 long grass, and shooting off into the midst of a multitude of its 

 fellows." Almost as one reads this graphic passage, low hurried 

 twitterings seem to fall upon the ear, and he who in his mind's eye 

 cannot see that martin is no true lover of nature. 



