298 SWALLOWS AND MARTINS 



and got on quite amicably together. The cock helped to feed both 

 broods. 1 The menage d troi-s has been reported in the case of house- 

 martins, and is probably not infrequent in the case of other gregarious 

 nesting species. 2 



The beginning of nesting operations is no doubt also delayed by 

 bad weather cold, wet, or windy sometimes extending the period 

 from the usual ten days or less to more than double that time. Two 

 illustrations of this follow, which, like the preceding episodes, will 

 serve incidentally to give us an insight into other features of the 

 domestic life of swallows and martins. 



The first concerns a pair of house-martins. These began to 

 build at dawn on May 1. They worked till noon, then left off till 

 5 P.M., when they began again, stopping at 6, after which they disap- 

 peared. This represents a normal day's work in fine weather. Next 

 day was cloudy. The birds did not appear at the nest till 11 A.M., 

 they started work at 12 P.M., and disappeared at 3 P.M. On May 4, 

 which was cold and cloudy, they did not appear at all. May 5 gave 

 promise of a beautiful day, and the birds were at work from dawn. 

 A thick mist stopped operations at 9 A.M. At 5 P.M. it was again 

 bright, and an hour's work was done, the pair remaining to roost in the 

 foundations of their nest. It was not completed till the 19th, thus 

 taking nineteen days, during which time the weather was generally 

 bad. Three full days' work only were done ; on six days no work at 

 all, and on the remainder varying amounts, sometimes very little. 3 



The following account of a pair of swallows, which I owe to a 

 German ornithologist, is still more detailed. 4 The cock arrived on 

 April 22, and next morning his mate joined him. On the 24th they 

 began building upon a small nesting-shelf. As they were not in agree- 

 ment as to the site of the nest, each began operations on a different 



1 Zoologisches Garten, 1868, 77 (Dr. R. Meyer). The editor notes a similar instance in which a 

 cock siskin mated with two hen canaries. 



1 E. Selous, Bird Life Glimpses, p. 244. 



* Summary of a record kept by Hepburn, and published in Macgillivray's History of Birds, 

 Hi. 582. 



1 H. Schacht in the Zoologisches Garten, 1875, 20-29. 



