AN ABNORMAL KINGFISHER 173 



habit, no nest is made by the bird, the eggs being 

 laid on the floor of the hole ; in fact, such birds 

 throw out all they find inside a hole, and the 

 Starling greatly annoys and even dispossesses the 

 much larger and more powerful Green Woodpecker 

 by carrying nesting-stuff into his borings. When, 

 however, the hole-builder, burrower or merely 

 appropriator, is a member of a family whose general 

 custom is to nest outside, something like the normal 

 nest of the family, though often a very slovenly 

 one, is made, as by the Sand-Martin, Jackdaw, 

 Stock-Dove, and Sheldrake, and the many kinds 

 of Tits. 



This points to the hole-building in these cases 

 being a recent habit, but some members of genuine 

 troglodyte families may as an abnormality build 

 a nest ; Mr. E. C. Stuart Baker has found the 

 Indian White-breasted Kingfisher (Halcyon smyr- 

 nensis) doing so, the structure being a domed one 

 of moss. There is some connection between making 

 a domed nest and breeding in holes, for, as every 

 one knows, the House-Sparrow, whose nest is 

 naturally a domed one in a tree, readily takes to 

 nesting in holes, and so do many of the small 

 foreign Finches commonly imported. 



In the case of the Tree- Sparrow, the hole- building 

 habit has apparently nearly superseded the tree- 

 nesting one, a nest of this species anywhere but in 

 a hole of a tree in most places in Europe, or of a 

 building in the Himalayas, Japan, and a few other 

 places being cited as a notable exception. This is 



