124 BIRDS'-NESTS. 



Testing any surprise at the grand scene that lay spread 

 out before him. He was taking his bearings and de- 

 termining how far he could trust the power of his un- 

 tried wings to take him out of harm's way. After a 

 moment's pause, with a loud chirrup, he launched out 

 and made tolerable headway. The others rapidly fol- 

 lowed. Each one, as it started upward, from a sud- 

 den impulse, contemptuously saluted the abandoned 

 nest with its excrement. 



Though generally regular in their habits and in- 

 stincts, yet the birds sometimes seem as whimsical and 

 capricious 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, tak- 

 ing 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 



