BIRDS IN GENERAL. 



11 



In general, however, every bird resorts to 

 hatch in those climates and places where its 

 food is found in greatest plenty ; and always at 

 that season whea provisions are in the greatest 



that, sinking deep into this downy accumulation, it 

 seems almost lost itself when sitting, and the young 

 when hatched, appear stifled with the warmth of their 

 bedding and the heat of their apartment; while the 

 white-throat, the blackcap, and others, which will hatch 

 their young nearly at the same period, or in July, require 

 nothing of the kind. A few loose bents and goose-grass, 

 rudely entwined, with perhaps the luxury of some scat- 

 tered hairs, are perfectly sufficient for all the wants of 

 these; yet they are birds that live only in genial tem- 

 peratures, feel nothing of the icy gales that are natural 

 to our pretty indigenous artists, but flit from sun to sun, 

 and we might suppose would require much warmth in 

 our climate during the season of incubation ; but it is 

 not so. The greenfinch places its nest in the hedge with 

 little regard to concealment ; its fabric is slovenly and 

 rude, and the materials of the coarsest kinds ; while the 

 chaffinch, just above it in the elm, hides its nest with 

 cautious care, arid moulds it with the utmost attention 

 to order, neatness, and form. One bird must have a 

 hole in the ground; to another a crevice in the wall, or 

 a chink in a tree, is indispensable. The bullfinch re- 

 quires fine roots for its nest ; the grey fly-catcher will 

 have cobwebs for the outworks of its shed. All the 

 parus tribe, except the individual above mentioned, select 

 some hollow in a tree or cranny in a wall ; and, shelter- 

 ed as such places must be, yet will they collect abun- 

 dance of feathers and warm materials for their infants' 

 lied. Endless examples might be found of the dissimi- 

 larity of requirements in these constructions among the 

 several associates of our groves, our hedges, and our 

 houses ; and yet the supposition cannot be entertained 

 for a moment that they are superfluous, or not essential 

 for some purpose with which we are unacquainted. By 

 how many of the ordinations of Supreme Intelligence is 

 our ignorance made manifest ? Even the fabrication of 

 the nests of these little animals exceeds our comprehen- 

 sion we know none of the causes or motives of that 

 unembodied mind that willed them thus. Journal of a 

 Naturalist. 



Professor Rennie, in his volume on the Architecture 

 of Birds, classes them according to their different styles 

 of workmanship. He makes twelve kinds. The first 

 division includes " mining-birds," such as the sand- 

 martin, which scoops out its nest in the escarpment of a 

 sand-pit or quarry: the burrowing-owl, the bee-eater, 

 and several others belong to this class. Next come the 

 " ground-builders," which construct a rude nest on the 

 surface, and select a spot possessing a temperature or 

 moisture favourable to the process of incubation. The 

 swallow furnishes the most striking example of the 

 operations of individuals which may appropriately be 

 termed " mason-birds." The thrush, and some others 

 which plaster the inside of their nests with clay, are 

 partially connected with this class. Afterwards come 

 birds which employs their bills as a tool for cutting out 

 or excavating their nests. The practice of the wood- 

 peckers in boring and chiselling a hole in which to shel- 

 ter the young brood, using means analogous to those 

 which the carpenter employs, obviously suggests the 

 idea of classing them, with some others of similar ha- 

 bits, as "carpenter-birds." Those birds, the natural 

 heat of whose body is veiy great, and who seldom have 

 more than a couple of eggs each sitting, take little trou- 

 ble in the construction of their nests. They are of the 

 simplest and rudest form, and consist only of a few 

 sticks loosely laid .together. They are termed "plat- 

 form-builders," this term being really descriptive oi 

 their breeding-places. The ring-clove, stock dove, and 



abundance. The large birds, and those of 

 the aquatic kinds, choose places as remote 

 from man as possible, as their food is in gene- 

 ral different from that which is cultivated by 



pigeons generally, with the golden eagle, the osprey, 

 he heron, the stork and the crane are platform-builders. 

 Among the ruins of Persepolis the stork frequently 

 juilds its nest on the top of a perfectly flat column. 

 The birds whose nests resemble basket-work are a large 

 class ; and the materials made use of vary from dried 

 twigs, which form the outwork and are without flexibi- 

 ity, to carpenter's shavings, delicate fibrous roots, grass 

 joth coarse and fine, and horse-hair. The degree of art 

 ,vith which the " basket-making birds " employ their 

 materials is not less various. Other birds weave the 

 materials of their nests together in the neatest man- 

 ner: the nests of the hedge-sparrow and wagtail afford 

 the most familiar examples of the art of the " weaver- 

 )irds." 



The art of the tailor seems more unlikely to be prac- 

 tised by a bird than that of the weaver. There are, 

 low-ever, several varieties included amongst the " tailor- 

 jirds." The orchard-starling of the United States 

 "orms the external part of its nest of a particular species 

 of long, tough, and flexible grass, "knit or sewed," 

 says Wilson in his ' American Ornithology,' " through 

 and through in a thousand directions, as if actually done 

 with a needle." He relates that an old lady of his ac- 

 quaintance, to whom he was once showing this curious 

 'abrication, asked him, in a tone between joke and earn- 

 est, whether he did not think it possible to learn these 

 birds to dam stockings ? The nest of the orchard-star- 

 ling is hemispherical, three inches deep by four in 

 breadth ; the concavity scarcely two inches deep by two 

 in diameter. The enthusiastic ornithologist whom we 

 have quoted says, " I had the curiosity to detach one of 

 the fibres, or stalks, of dried grass from the nest, and 

 found it to measure thirteen inches in length ; and in 

 that distance it was thirty-four times hooked through 

 and returned, winding round and round the nest." 

 The tailor-bird of India is described by some naturalists 

 as actually picking up a dead leaf, and forming a nest by 

 sewing it with some fine fibres to the side of a living 

 leaf. Three nests so formed are to be seen in the Brit- 

 ish Museum.' Forbes has described in his 'Oriental 

 Memoirs,' from personal observation, the ingenuity of 

 the tailor-bird. " It first," he says, "selects a plant 

 with large leaves, and then gathers cotton from the 

 shrub, spins it to a thread by means of its long bill and 

 slender feet, and then, as with a needle, sews the leaves 

 neatly together to conceal its nest." 



The idea that man learned some of the useful arts 

 from observation of the habits of other animate beings 

 is not true in any extensive sense. Instinct pointed out 

 to the class termed " felt-making birds " the suitability 

 of the materials which they select for weaving or uniting 

 into a continuous mass. The nest of the capocier, an 

 American bird, which was examined by Wilson, is de- 

 scribed by him as so " neatly worked and felted together, 

 that it might have been taken for a piece of fine cloth a 

 little worn." Man was long before he employed the 

 same materials in the manufacture of cloth, and it is 

 only by the aid of the microscope that he has been able 

 to discover the cause which adapts them for this purpose, 

 and the true character of their felting properties. The 

 " felt-making birds " availed themselves of these pro- 

 perties from the creation. 



The nests of the esculent swallow of Java are an arti- 

 cle of commercial importance, the nests themselves being 

 edible, and considered as a luxury and restorative. These 

 nests are supposed to be composed of oceanic vegetables, 

 whose principle being highly gelatinous, and cemented 

 with the salivary gluten of the bird, form a sort of edi- 



