2 ANIMAL ARTISANS 



cleft, or low cave, and there sets to work with 

 tremendous energy to make a stone foundation for 

 its house and a stone wall around or in front of it. 

 Technically speaking, the pedrero is not so much a 

 mason as what is called in Yorkshire a " dry dyker " 

 that is, he uses no mortar in his job, though some 

 other birds can mix mortar to dry to any degree of 

 hardness. In the Boer war the dry dykers of a 

 certain East Yorkshire regiment used to be asked to 

 volunteer to build " sangars," those being practically 

 the same as the dry stone walls of the North. If 

 Aristophanes had been acquainted with the black 

 wheatear's accomplishment, he would no doubt have 

 assigned to it the business of building the walls round 

 the City of the Birds when about to establish their 

 league between the realms of the gods and the habita- 

 tions of men. 



Having chosen the place for its home which, due 

 regard being had to proportionate size, in comparison 

 to human ideas, would represent to the bird a low- 

 browed cavern much like that in which the remains 

 of the great sloth were found in Patagonia it first 

 collects a number of stones, and places them together 

 as a foundation for the future nest. Next, and this 

 is much more strange, it builds a sangar, or dry stone 

 wall, all along the front of the space which the nest 

 is to occupy later. This is not a mere flimsy wall, 

 but often a solid barrier, in which the stones are piled 

 in such a way as to make it almost or quite as thick 

 as it is long. The barrier of stones in front of 

 one nest found by Colonel Howard Irby, and described 





