NOTES AND QUERIES. 35? 



House-Martins and House-Sparrows. — A dozen years ago I made 

 some alterations to this house, and some half dozen years later various 

 eligible sites for building purposes which it offered attracted the 

 attention of two or three adventurous pairs of House-Martins. Their 

 experiment proving a complete success, their numbers have increased 

 each subsequent season, doubtless by the addition of the previous 

 year's young birds to the old stock. 



The north side of the house is the favourite, but the eastern one 

 runs it close ; the south side is less run after, while not a single nest 

 has been built on the western side. Architectural considerations 

 have considerable influence on this selection, but not an exclusive 

 one. All the nests on the north side (fifteen at the moment of writing) 

 are crowded into a somewhat short stretch of wall where the eaves 

 overhang in a most comfortable manner, between two shallow wings 

 or projections, on which no nest has ever been attempted. On the 

 whole western side the eaves hardly perhaps hang over far enough 

 to afford complete protection. On the other hand, there have been 

 several nests on the east and south sides built on portions of wall 

 that have no overhanging eaves to speak of, and also a few built in 

 an upper corner of the recesses of windows. I am not aware of any 

 recent observations on this point, but in ' Homes Without Hands ' 

 (1865, p. 317) the late Eev. J. G. Wood has some very relevant 

 remarks, too long to quote in full, and I must only extract the 

 following : " The points of the compass are always noted by the 

 Martin, for there are some points which it clearly detests. . 

 A wall with a north-eastern aspect is a favourite locality, while a 

 southern wall is seldom chosen. . . . My own house, however, 

 forms an exception, . . . for the Martins have chosen to build on 

 the south wall only, probably because the eaves project so far that 

 after 9 a.m. the nests are in shadow. Moreover, . . ...a narrow 

 ledge . . . forms a support for the nests." 



The Martins start nesting immediately on arrival at their summer 

 domicile; this year my first intimation of their return, at about 

 10 a.m. on April 23rd, was the cheerful chatter of one of these wholly 

 delightful little birds, and I looked up in time to see it pay a visit of 

 inspection to its old nest, which it must have flown straight to on 

 completion of its migration. The latest young do not leave the nests 

 until September (I found a hatched-out egg-shell freshly dropped on 

 August 24th this year). 



Perhaps once in a season a nest falls, but it would seem as if every 

 nest were carefully inspected before being entrusted with another 

 clutch of eggs, or rather with a second brood of young, whose weight 



