How vajHous Birds Build. 



sufficiently well for their purpose. They are clothed by nature 

 with such an oily, impermeable coat of plumage, that they have 

 little need to care about climate ; they have enough to do to 

 look after their fishing, and to feed themselves and their young; 

 for all these sea-side families have immense appetites. 



Herons and storks build in a sort of basket-making fashion ; 

 so do the jays and the mocking birds, only in a much better 

 way; but as they have all large families they are obliged to do 

 so. They lay down, in the first place, a sort of rude platform, 

 upon which they erect a basket-like nesf of more or less elegant 

 design, a web of roots and dry twigs strongly woven together. 

 The little golden -crested wren hangs her purse-like nest to a 

 bough, and, as in the nursery song, " When the wind blows the 

 cradle rocks." An Australian bird, a kind of fly-catcher, called 

 there the razor-grinder, from its note resembling the sound of a 

 razor- grinder at work, builds her nest on the slightest twig hanging 

 over the water, in order to protect it from snakes which climb 

 after them. She chooses for her purpose a twig so slender that 

 it would not bear the weight of the snake, and thus she is per- 

 fectly safe from her enemy. The same, probably, is the cause 

 why in tropical countries, where snakes and monkeys, and such 

 bird-enemies abound, nests are so frequently suspended by 

 threads or little cords from slender boughs. 



The canary, the goldfinch, and chaffinch, are skilful cloth- 

 weavers or felt makers; the latter, restless and suspicious, 

 speckles the outside of her nest with a quantity of white lichen, 

 so that it exactly imitates the tree branch on which it is placed, 

 and can hardly be detected by the most accustomed eye. Glue- 

 ing and felting play an important part in the work of the bird- 



