CHAPTER XI 



REPRODUCTION— NIDIFICATION 



The first nest-builder. Origin of nests. Primitive nests. Burrowing. 

 Simple nests. The nest of the Thrush tribe. Complex nests. Pensile nests. 

 Mud nests. The remarkable nests of Tree-swifts. Colonies. Variability in 

 nesting sites. Strange nesting sites. Nest-building and instinct, 



THOUGH some birds are content to deposit their eggs on 

 the bare ground, the majority construct a receptacle of 

 some kind in which to lay them, displaying in this work 

 every imaginable degree of skill ; for while some contrive to 

 manage with the merest apology for a nursery, others exhibit 

 the most marvellous ingenuity in its architecture. At no time 

 perhaps, except just before and during this time of nest-building, 

 are the inherent peculiarities of birds more evident. And in no 

 phase of their life-history do they show their racial character- 

 istics more strikingly. Species at other times social enough 

 now steal away in pairs to work out in seclusion the command 

 laid on them by Nature, to increase and multiply; while on 

 the other hand, birds usually of solitary habits combine to form 

 huge communities, where, as is usual in communities, robbery, 

 battle and murder, and sudden death, are hourly occurrences. 

 Only at this time having any really fixed dwelling-place, idio- 

 syncrasies in the choice of the site thereof are not rare ; and so 

 too we meet at this time with curious departures in this matter 

 on the part of some species from the common traditions of the 

 tribe ; departures the more puzzling and the more instructive, 

 because they appear, as a rule, to be prompted rather by a love 

 of eccentricity than by motives of expediency. 



This phase of bird-life, the prelude to the crowning work 

 of every living thing^ — reproduction — is by no means to be re- 

 garded as the measure of the birds' parental affection. We do 

 not find in short that those birds which build no nests prove 

 but indifferent parents, and that the parental instinct grows 



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