Gr. ROOPER—BIRDS ! THEIR NESTS AND HABITS. 
99 
building in a tree has ever been recorded. The nuthatch, who 
builds in the hole of a tree, has a curious habit of contracting the 
entrance by building up a wall of clay. It is said that after the hen 
bird has laid her eggs the cock builds her in, the hole being made too 
small for egress. Through this the cock bird feeds her until the 
young are hatched. I do not vouch for this, but certainly the hole 
of one I examined in Windsor Park last year seemed too small for 
the ingress or egress of the bird. The clay, properly tempered with 
saliva, was as hard as a brick; I could scarcely cut it with a knife. 
The toucan is said to build his mate in in like manner. The golden- 
crested wren hangs its nest under a bough, and is the only British 
bird that does so. The reed-warbler attaches hers to three reeds 
fastened together. The pee-wit, and birds of the plover and sand¬ 
piper tribe, make scarcely any nest, contenting themselves with any 
casual cavity in the ground. The pee-wit is the producer of the 
much-prized plovers’ eggs, sold for 6 d. a dozen in Wales and Scot¬ 
land, and for 6s. in London. All the tribe lay four eggs, but, if 
taken, the number in subsequent layings is gradually reduced to 
one. The pee-wit, though called the green plover, is not a true 
plover, birds of that class having three toes only. The sandpipers 
have four, and the pee-wit, possessing a rudimentary back toe, is 
incapacitated for admission into the aristocratic family of the plovers. 
Some birds build no nest at all, contenting themselves with the 
old or deserted ones of others. The kestrel and sparrow-hawk, for 
instance, lay their eggs in an old crow’s or magpie’s nest—occupy 
unfurnished lodgings as it were—for which, like the Irish peasant of 
the present day, they pay no rent. Crows never resort to their old 
nests, but rooks, who appear to hold on a repairing lease, commonly 
mend up their old habitations during the winter, and occupy them 
again in the spring. The cuckoo not only shirks the trouble of 
building a nest, but imposes on other birds, and those the smallest 
and weakest, the responsibility of maintaining her offspring. She 
drops her egg promiscuously into the nest of any soft-billed bird 
she comes across. The hedge-sparrow, the tit-lark, and the water- 
wagtail, are the most generally favoured, but the egg was found 
many years since by one of my sons in a swallow’s nest, a fact not 
previously recorded; and I am assured by a gentleman in this 
neighbourhood that a young cuckoo was hatched last year in a 
wren’s nest. This, if no mistake was made, and I have no reason 
to suppose it was, is unprecedented. Whether the diminutive birds 
could have brought their great foster-child to maturity is uncertain, 
as the clumsy bird tumbled out of or off the nest (for the upper 
portion must have been torn away), and some old hens pecked its 
eyes out. So the manner of its death was equally singular with 
that of its birth. Shakespeare tells us— 
“ The hedge-sparrow fed the cuckoo so long, 
She had her head hit off by her young.” 
In Jenny Wren’s case she might have been swallowed whole, and 
the cuckoo have felt neither remorse nor inconvenience from the 
meal. The mode in which the cuckoo deposits its eggs is as curious 
