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, 



