74 HOMES WITHOUT HANDS. 



CHAPTER II. 



BURROWING BIRDS. 



The Sand Martin. — Mode of Burrowing and Shape of the Tunnel. — Enemies of the 

 Sand Martin. — Midges and Martins. — The Kingfisher and its Habits. — Its Bur- 

 row and peculiar Nest. — Number of the Eggs. — The Puffin a feathered Usurper. 

 — The Feroe Islands and the Puffins. — Pro aris et focis. — The Mutton Bird and 

 its Burrows. — Snakes and Birds. — The Jackdaw, Stockdove, and Sheldrake. 

 — Nest of the Sheldrake. — The Bee-eater and its Habits. — Its Burrow and Nest. 

 — The Stormy Petrel. — Its Mode of Nesting and shallow Tunnels — Mode of 

 feeding its Young. — Evil Odor of its Burrow. — The Woodpecker. — Its Uses and 

 misunderstood Character. — Method of Burrowing. — The Fungus and the Wood- 

 pecker. — American Woodpeckers. — The Wry-neck. — Its popular Names and Lo- 

 cality of its Nest. — The Starling. — Its social Character. — Locality of its Habita- 

 tion. — The Tree Creeper. — The Nut-hatch and the Hoopoe. — Curious Nest 

 of the Hoopoe.— The Cole-tit and its Habits. — A Cole-tit's Nest at Walton Hall. 

 — The Toucan.— The enormous Beak and its Uses. — Nest of the Toucan. — The 

 g WIFT . — Its Nest and Eggs. — Its curious Feet and their Structure. 



We now take leave of the furred burrowers, and proceed to 

 those which wear feathers instead of hair. 



One of the best examples of Bird Burrowers is the well-known 

 Sand Martin ( Cotile riparia), so plentiful in this country. The 

 powers of this pretty little bird seem to be quite inadequate to 

 the arduous labors which it performs so easily, and few would 

 suppose, after contemplating its tiny bill, that it was capable of 

 boring tunnels into tolerably hard sandstone. Such, however, 

 is the case, for the Sand Martin is familiarly known to drive its 

 tunnels into sandstone that is hard enough to destroy all the 

 edge of a knife. 



The bird does not prefer a laborious to an easy task, and if 

 it can find a spot where the soil is quite loose, and yet where 

 the sides of the burrow will not collapse, it will always take ad- 

 vantage of such a locality. I have frequently seen such in- 

 stances of judgment, where the birds had selected the sandy in- 

 tervals between strata of stone, and so saved themselves from any 

 trouble except scraping and throwing out the loose sand. 



When, however, the Sand Martin is unable to find such a sit- 

 uation, it sets to work in a very systematic fashion, trying several 



