106 WAKE-ROBIN 
Though generally regular in their habits and 
instincts, yet the birds sometimes seem as whimsi- 
cal and capricious as superior beings. One is not 
safe, for instance, in making any absolute assertion 
as to their place or mode of building. Ground- 
‘builders often get up into a bush, and tree-builders 
‘sometimes get upon the ground or into a tussock 
,of grass. The song sparrow, which is a ground- 
builder, has been known to build in the knothole 
of a fence rail; and a chimney swallow once got 
tired of soot and smoke, and fastened its nest on a 
rafter in a hay barn. A friend tells me of a pair 
‘of barn swallows which, taking a fanciful turn, 
saddled their nest in the loop of a rope that was 
pendent from a peg in the peak, and liked it so 
well that they repeated the experiment next year. 
I have known the social sparrow, or “hairbird,” to 
build under a shed, in a tuft of hay that hung 
down, through the loose flooring, from the mow 
above. It usually contents itself with half a dozen 
stalks of dry grass and a few long hairs from a cow’s 
tail loosely arranged on the branch of an apple-tree. 
| The rough-winged swallow builds in the wall and 
| in old stone-heaps, and I have seen the robin build 
i in similar localities. Others have found its nest in 
old, abandoned wells. The house wren will build 
_ in anything that has an accessible cavity, from an 
old boot to a bombshell. A pair of them once per- 
sisted in building their nest in the top of a certain 
pump-tree, getting in through the opening above 
the handle. The pump being in daily use, the nest 
