WILD LIFE OF ORCHARD AND FIELD 



"It is interesting to watch the sand-martins 

 building their nests, or, rather, excavating the 

 tunnels in which they will afterwards be built. To 

 see one enter one of these whilst it is yet but a few 

 inches long, and then to see the dust powdering 

 out at the aperture, as from the mouth of an en- 

 sconced cannon, is pretty. The sand is scattered 

 out backward with the feet, but the bird also uses 

 its bill as a pickaxe, often making a series of rapid 

 little blows with it, almost like a woodpecker, the 

 wings, which quite cover the body, quivering at 

 the same time. Both sexes work at the hole, and 

 both often fly together to it, one remaining cling- 

 ing at the edge whilst the other scratches out the 

 sand from the inside. . . . Sometimes three or four 

 will descend upon the same hole and cling there 

 without quarrelling ; but once I saw a bird in a hole 

 attacked by another, who flew suddenly upon it 

 with a little twittering scream. 



"Though each pair of birds excavate their own 

 tunnel, yet the whole community, or, at any rate, 

 a large proportion of it, will sometimes work to- 

 gether, sweeping on to the pit's face in a body, 

 clinging there and burrowing, with a constant 

 twittering, then darting off silently in a crowd and 

 sailing and circling round in the pit's amphitheatre, 



285 



