THE CHIMNEY SWALLOW. 11 
another brood ready for his care; thus all the season is occu- 
pied by them in building nests, in incubation, and in rearing 
their young, until the moulting season arrives, which is 
about the twrenty-fifth of August. The pigeon family breed 
in a similar manner, except that the young are fed from the 
crop of the male, and it is truly a greater wonder in nature, 
that there should exist a sympathy between the male pigeon 
and his offspring, and that at their appearance his crop 
should undergo so great a change. The rapacious birds 
return annually to their old nests, and by repairing them, 
make them suitable receptacles for their eggs. There is an 
unfitness in the structure of birds of prey hid makes it 
inconvenient for them to build a nest with the facility of 
some other families of birds. The white-headed eagle selects 
some dead branch of a tree, and by hooking her bill on it, 
with her weight breaks it off. In its descent, she swoops and 
grasping it with her claws carries it away to make her nest; 
she pounces upon bunches of hay, sods of earth or any heap 
of rubbish, and carries it to the already accumulated heap of 
such substances. There is no artistic skill displayed ‘in its 
construction; the top of it is merely a horizontal plane, with 
a shallow cavity to receive her eggs. Some families in this 
order of birds build better nests, but they show the same 
unhandy and awkward way in doing it, and there are some 
species of other families in this order which build no nest. 
There are other birds, also, such as the swallows, whose 
forms are ill-adapted for good nest builders; with small feet 
and short weak legs it is toilsome for them to gather mate- 
rial for a nest from off the ground. Now observe all those 
birds whose structure is similar to that of the swallow family. 
Not one species of the family Caprimulgide builds a nest. 
The whippoorwill lays her eggs on the ground in the woods: 
the night-hawk on the naked rock, or the bare ground in 
open pastures. Look at the belted kingfisher, whose form 
is similar to the above mentioned birds; how ill-adapted he 
is to gather materials from the ground to form a nest. Al- 
