2604 Birds. 



the thermometer stood at 10°. One very cold day, in November, 1 

 was looking at a fisherman by the side of the Trent, when a kingfisher 

 darted from the bank where I stood, and within twenty yards of me 

 dropped suddenly on the water, and in a most dexterous manner seized 

 a small fish and carried it to the opposite bank, where it was speedily 

 gulped down. This curious achievement seemed to startle my quiet 

 piscatory friend " from his propriety," who remarked " that he thought 

 the bird the best fisher of the two," and I was of the same opinion, as 

 the worthy man had been five hours at the river- side and only had 

 " one glorious nibble." 



Chimney Swallow (Hirundo rustica). On October 17th, 1843, a 

 pair of swallows were flying about in a snow-shower. The fact of this 

 bird building in chimneys appears to be in some localities an extra- 

 ordinary circumstance, whilst in others it is accounted equally curious 

 for it to place its nest in an outhouse or on the top of a rafter. With 

 us it chooses both situations, and occasionally others very remarkable. 

 I have seen it occupy the corner of the porch over a cottage door, not 

 many feet from the ground, and also place its nest against the ceiling 

 of a green-house, partly supported by the glass and partly by the wall, 

 and the material adhering equally firm to both objects. This situation 

 was the more extraordinary, inasmuch as the little architects, on each 

 visit to their habitation, had to enter through a broken pane of glass 

 and push aside a vine-leaf which blocked up the entrance, and it was 

 equally curious that through the nest ran a bell-wire leading to an 

 adjoining room, which, although often pulled by the family residing 

 in the house, did not injure a fragment of the nest nor incommode its 

 inmates. For many years a pair of swallows occupied a nest which 

 they had built on the wall of a low garret, which was used nightly as 

 a sleeping-room : the nest was about four feet from the floor, — so low 

 indeed from the floor that a child could easily look into it. The 

 swallow completes her nest (to which she brings about sixteen ounces 

 of damp mud) in about twelve days. A swallow, in two instances, 

 made a nest by plastering up a hole in the wall of a barn, leaving a 

 small entrance at one corner : these nests were occupied many years. 

 A pair which I watched brought food to the young seventy-two times 

 in an hour. A few summers ago a very cold day occurred, and the 

 swallows hereabouts gathered together, as if for departure : after flying 

 about for some time they settled on the perpendicular wall of a house, 

 at the back of a chimney, and huddled together in lumps, clustering 

 just like bees : as they clung here and there to the building they very 

 much resembled old clouts or patches of dark mud. Previously to 



