POKING AROUND FOR BIRDS' NESTS 129 



commotion. Both parents and all five children 

 were making a tremendous uproar (relative to 

 their size, that is). We ran to see what was the 

 matter, and found that the wind had blown a branch 

 from a near-by tree down across the entrance to the 

 nest, where it had stuck. The parents almost 

 hopped on our shoulders as we removed the obstruc- 

 tion, and the mother was up to the hole to see her 

 babies before we were well away from the nest. 



It is a curious fact that in our new home, only 

 fifteen miles away, but out in the country instead 

 of on a village street, we have not yet so much as 

 seen a wren. Whether this means that the wrens 

 not only prefer houses, but houses in villages, or 

 whether it means they are locally distributed in 

 Berkshire, I have not yet enough data to say. 



All farmers' boys, of course, know the nests of 

 the barn and cliff swallows the latter built in 

 colonies under the eaves, curious affairs, like retorts, 

 with the neck sloping slightly downward. Most 

 farmers, too, recognize the enormous value of 

 swallows as insect - destroyers, and I fancy it is 

 pretty generally a punishable offense to molest a 

 swallow's nest. In my boyhood, as I recall, there 

 was even some superstition attached to the barn- 

 swallows. They brought good luck, and if you 

 destroyed their nests evil would follow. Like so 

 many superstitions, this one certainly had an 

 element of substantial fact. The chimney-swifts 

 were less desirable, because in the autumn their 

 nests often made the chimney smoke and had to 

 be fished out or knocked down by lowering a pine 

 branch on a rope from the roof. Once upon a time, 



