1 1 6 BIRDS'-NES TS. 



impulse, contemptuously saluted the abandoned nest 

 with its excrement. 



Though generally regular in their habits and instincts, 

 yet the birds sometimes seem as whimsical and capri- 

 cious as superior beings. One is not safe, for instance, 

 in making any absolute assertion as to their place or 

 mode of building. Ground builders often get up into 

 a bush, and tree builders sometimes get upon the 

 ground or into a tussock of grass. The song sparrow, 

 which is a ground builder, has been known to build in 

 the knot-hole of a fence rail, and a chimney swallow 

 once got tired of soot and smoke, and fastened its nest 

 on a rafter in a hay barn. A friend tells me of a pair 

 of barn swallows which, taking a fanciful turn, saddled 

 their nest in the loop of a rope that was pendent from a 

 peg in the peak, and liked it so well that they repeated 

 the experiment next year. I have known the social 

 sparrow, or " hair-bird," to build under a shed, in a tuft 

 of hay that hung down, through the loose flooring, from 

 the mow above. It usually contents itself with half a 

 dozen stalks of dry grass and a few long hairs from a 

 cow's tail loosely arranged on the branch of an apple- 

 tree. The rough-winged swallow builds in the wall 

 and in old stone heaps, and I have seen the robin build 

 in similar localities. Others have found its nest in old, 

 abandoned wells. The house wren will build in any- 

 thing that has an accessible cavity, from an old boot 

 to a bombshell. A pair of them once persisted in 

 building their nest in the top of a certain pump-tree, 



