A MARTINS 9 COLONY 213 



of the window ; and the necessary roof-cover is supplied 

 by the other nests rather than the house eaves. 



The busy scene is delightful to watch. The parents 

 are very assiduous ; and as each clings, as easily as a 

 fly to a pane, to the side of the nest, you see, as you can 

 hardly see when the bird is in flight, the neat white frill 

 on the legs, suggestive of the clothing of the early 

 Victorian child, whose drawers were made to appear 

 below the skirt. The seductive curve of the bird s body 

 and neck, as he dabs the flies, several brought in one 

 beakful, into the clamorous mouth, is one of the atti 

 tudes that abides in the mind s eye, like the hover of a 

 kestrel or the stance of a heron. How many flies a day 

 must be caught to satisfy the hunger of those 200 or 

 more nestlings and their parents ? 



This large colony under the farmhouse eaves has been 

 growing for some years. Martins are clever, but slow 

 builders. It is said that they must wait for each layer of 

 mud to dry before the next is affixed ; and the right mud 

 is hard to come by in a dry season. They prefer last 

 year s nests ; and build, like the ravens, for more than a 

 year. A certain number of the old nests fall during 

 winter storms and some are ruined by sparrows. You 

 see half nests and quarter nests ; and not all of these are 

 remodelled in the next spring ; but surviving nests are 

 an invitation, an attraction ; and the more that remain 

 after the winter the larger the colony is apt to be. It is 

 likely, as the records would lead us to expect, that some 

 of these birds are the same birds as nested in the same 

 place last year and perhaps several years before that 

 though some 6,000 miles there and back are travelled 

 in the interval. Place-memory is very faithful in this 

 tribe of migrant bird, as the bird-ringers are proving both 

 in Africa and Britain. 



