46 
NATURE NOTES 
of the way. Even snipe and waterhens have been known to 
come up to the house, though the latter are very shy birds, and 
in very hard frosts may be seen fixed among the twigs of the 
hedgerows frozen to death. Still, they do occasionally conquer 
their fear of mankind and walk warily on to the lawn in quest of 
food ; but the fieldfare never. Other wild birds contrive to 
support themselves in some sort of fashion. For the wood 
pigeon there are turnip tops. The skylark gets sufficient green 
food to keep him alive ; and is never picked up a mere skeleton, 
like the waterhen, the fieldfare, and the redwing. 
A SHORT MONOGRAPH OF PLOCEUS 
BAYA— No. II. 
“ Through knots of young date-trees, in who.se plumy crests 
The Bayas are building their pendulous nests.” 
— From old Persian Legend, 1 6 th Century. 
INCE I wrote my short monograph on the “ Ploceus 
Baya,” one of the family of the weaver-birds, pub- 
lished in Nature Notes of February, 1898, I have 
been making a further effort to ascertain, if possible, 
the objects sought by these interesting little birds in depositing 
particles of mud on either side of the perch in the male nest, or 
what is more suitably termed by the natives of India the swing- 
nests, or “ jhoola.” I stated in my paper, p. 29 of that number 
of Nature Notes, that “on either side of the male nest near to 
the perch is always to be found, adhering to the grass, small bits 
of clay or rather mud, but what this is intended for no one can 
surmise. Some say that it is to act as a whetstone to sharpen 
their beaks ; others, from what natives have told them, think 
that the male bird puts a firefly or glow-worm on the wet mud 
in order to act as a light to cheer the female bird at night during 
nesting time.” Mr. Layard, of Ceylon, who studied the habits 
of these birds very carefully, never met with a firefly in the nest, 
and though I have several nests with the mud, there is no sign 
of there having been any portion of an insect attached. Oliver 
Goldsmith, in his “Natural History,” 1816, has a note about 
this to the following effect : “ The male bird keeps watch, and 
puts on, one side a little tough clay, and on the top of this clay is 
fixed a glow-worm to afford its inhabitants light in the night. 
It must be left, therefore, like much else in the study of Nature, 
for future investigation.” 
Accordingly, through the kindness of my friend Mr. T. L. 
Barlow, a further enquiry was set on foot with a Mr. Assistant- 
Commissioner Buckley, of the Salt Revenue Department, who 
for many years has devoted himself to natural history, and he 
writes from Marwar or Jodhpur, Kajputana, under dates February 
21 and April ii, 1900 : “ You, of course, know the shape of the 
