CHAPTER II. 



BURROWING BIRDS. 



The Sani) Maktin — Mode of burrowing and shape of the tunnel — £uemies of the 

 Sand Martin — Midges and Martins — ^The Kingfisher and its habits — Its 

 burrow and peculiar nest — Number of the eggs — The Puffin a feathered 

 usurper — The Feroe Islands and the PufiBns— Pro aris et focis —The Mutton 

 Bird and its burrows — Snakes and birds — The Jackdaw, Stockdove, and 

 Sheldrake — Nest of the Sheldrake — The Bee-eater and its habits — Its 

 burrow and nest — The Stormy Petrel — Its mode of nesting and shallow 

 tunnels — mode of feeding its young — Evil odour of its burrow — The WooD- 

 i-ECKEE — Its uses and misunderstood character — Method of burrowing — The 

 Fungus and the Woodpecker — American Woodpeckers — ^The Wryneck — Its 

 popular names and locality of its nest — The Starling — Its social character — 

 Locality of its habitation — The Tree Creeper — The Nuthatch and the 

 Hoopoe — Curious nest of the Hoopoe — The Cole-tit and its habits— A Cole- 

 tit's nest at Walton Hall — The Toucan — The enormous beak and its uses — 

 Nest of the Toucan — The Swift — Its nest and eggs — Its curious feet and their 

 structure. 



We now take leave of the furred burrowers, and proceed to those 

 which wear feathers instead of hair. 



One of the best examples of Bird Burrowers is the well-known 

 Sand Martin (Gotile riparia), so plentiful in this country. The 

 powers of this pretty little bird seem to be qviite inadequate to 

 the arduous labours which it performs so easily, and few would 

 suppose, after contemplating its tiny biU, that it was capable of 

 boring tunnels into tolerably hard sandstone. Such, however, is 

 the case, for the Sand Martin is familiarly known to drive its 

 tunnels into sandstone that is hard enough to destroy all the edge 

 of a knife. 



The bird does not prefer a laborious to an easy task, and if it 

 can find a spot where the soil is quite loose, and yet where the 

 sides of the burrow wUl not collapse, it wiU always take advantage 

 of such a locality. I have frequently seen such instances of 

 judgment, where the birds had selected the sandy intervals 



