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nesting sparrow will often catch as they fall, or, 

 taking two or three from the ground at once, will 

 often drop one of them before reaching her nest, 

 when another sparrow will intercept it, in her turn, in 

 mid-air and carry it off to her own. Their untidy 

 nests found ample room for themselves in the creepers 

 of the Rectory, the roses, the vine, the wistaria, the 

 ivy. Others were built in the pipes, on the slopes 

 of the thatch, or on any irregularities in the walls. 

 The marauders appropriated also the holes of 

 the starlings after the latter had done with them. 

 They even, on occasion, took possession of a care- 

 fully constructed house-martin's nest and ejected the 

 proper owner. It is said, indeed, that sometimes 

 the martins will avenge the injury and insult offered 

 to the community by walling up, as a community, 

 the intruder in the nest. I venture to doubt the 

 story, partly, because I think, during so many years, 

 I should have seen something of the kind, if it had 

 been true, and partly, because I doubt the sparrow 

 ever being so fond of her eggs and young, as to 

 cling to them to the death and submit to be slowly 

 immured with them. If you take a sparrow's nest, 

 the bird shows, after the first minute or two, hardly 

 a symptom of distress, and promptly begins to build 

 another in the very same spot. The sparrow has 



