CHAPTER XXXI 

 THE MARTINS 



THE house-martin is rarer in the Broadland than the 

 swallow, but his white rump is frequently to be seen some 

 three weeks later than the swallow's burnished colours, 

 hawking over the green marshes, calling with his soft preet- 

 a-preet. But this brief period of fly-hawking lasts but a 

 fortnight, when they break into pairs, and seek the beam 

 eaves of some shed or mill or the rafters of some high-level 

 wood bridge; for, unlike the swallow, they seem to prefer 

 higher and loftier nesting-places ; for which reason perhaps 

 their nest is more protected, being cup-shaped with a small 

 port-hole for ingress and egress ; and in that rude chamber 

 the white eggs are placed on feathers. But there is often con- 

 siderable noise and fighting before the pairing is satisfactorily 

 settled, and even then they have to fight that thief, the cock- 

 sparrow, who sometimes quietly appropriates their nest and 

 ejects them. Altogether they seem more pugnacious than the 

 swallow, as you may see when one has captured a moth too 

 large for his wide mouth ; for immediately another will be 

 on his track and try to seize it, and what a preeting there 

 is then. But they do not remain long on the marshes ; as I 

 have said before, they go up to the houses to build their 

 coarse cradles of grass and mud, which they collect from the 

 dikes, ponds, and roadsides, preferring always a dark ooze 

 of a clayey nature, to a yellow loam. And they are wise, 

 for the nests made of this ooze do not crack so readily with 

 the heat, and last for years, the birds often returning season 

 after season to the same nest. Indeed, the swallow uses the 

 same ooze, and he too returns to his nest year after year 



