CURIOUS ARCHITECTS.
There is no topic in natural history so interesting as the architecture of birds; in the building of their nests they are exceedingly ingenious. We may well learn a lesson from the patience, diligence and perseverance which they display. Just as men are skilled in different mechanical employments, so we find in the bird tribe miners, masons, carpenters, weavers, basket-makers and tailors.
HUMMING BIRD’S NEST.
The humming bird constructs its nest of the finest silky down, and of cotton, or if these are not available, some other similar material. The inside is lined in the most delicate manner with soft substances; the outside is covered with moss, usually the color of the bough or twig to which the nest is attached, thus giving it the appearance of an excrescence. The delicacy and ingenuity of workmanship and skill could hardly be excelled by human art.
The humming bird is the “fairy of the feathered race”—the smallest and most beautiful—and they are found almost all over this continent. Most of them, however, dwell in the far South, where flowers are ever in bloom, and summer reigns all the year round. One species alone visits our chill Northern States—the humming bird with the ruby throat. It comes to us in July and is very shy; its stay is very short, for toward the first of September it departs to a warmer climate.
WOODPECKER DRILLING A HOLE FOR A NEST.
It is only in tropical countries that the several species of humming bird are seen in their abundance and variety. The islands between Florida and the main land of South America literally swarm with them. In the wild and uncultivated parts they inhabit the magnificent forests overhung with rare plants, whose blossoms vie in beauty with the jewel-like brilliancy of these animate gems of the air. In the cultivated portions of the country they abound in the gardens and seem to delight in society.
Lovely and full of nervous energy, these winged gems are constantly in the air, darting from one object to another, and displaying their gorgeous colors in the sunlight. When on a long journey, as during migration, they pass through the air in long undulations, raising themselves to a considerable height and then falling so as to form a curve. When feeding on a flower they keep themselves poised in one position as steadily as if suspended on a bough—making a humming sound with the rapid motion of their wings.
In disposition these little creatures are bold and pugnacious. In defending their nests they will attack birds five times their size and drive them off. When angry, their motions are very violent and their flight as swift as an arrow. Often the eye is incapable of following them, and their shrill, piercing note alone announces their presence.
Among the most dazzling of this brilliant tribe is the bar-tailed humming bird of Brazil. The tail is forked at the base, and consists of five feathers, graduated one above another, at almost equal distances. Their color is of the richest flame; the upper part of the body is golden green, and the under part emerald.
There are more than a hundred kinds of these birds, and all are noted for their surpassing beauty. What a beautiful conception in the author of nature were these exquisite little creatures! It is as if the flowers had taken wings, and life, and intelligence, to share in the sports of animal life.
NESTS OF THE BOTTLE BIRD.
The nest of the golden-crested wren, a most beautiful bird found in England and other parts of Europe, is a fine example of weaving. It is made of moss and lichen, and lined with feathers; it has a very small entrance at the top and the interior of the nest is also small, bearing no proportion to the size of the structure. The weaving of this nest is a work of great labor and assiduity, and compared with the bulk of the bird, it is of large dimensions.
NESTS OF SOCIAL WEAVERS.
The nest is suspended from the under surface of a fir branch, thickly clothed with foliage, by which it is almost entirely concealed and partly protected from the rain. Thus, beneath a natural canopy, this little bird rears her brood, whose cradle swings to and fro with every breeze. The eggs are from seven to ten in number, and of a pale brown color.
A naturalist who watched a nest containing eight small birds with a powerful opera glass, observed that the parent birds came to the nest with food every two minutes, or upon an average thirty-six times in an hour; and this continued full sixteen hours a day, which, if equally
divided between the brood, each would receive seventy-two feeds, the whole amounting to five hundred and seventy-six!
NESTS OF THE SAND MARTIN.
The woodpeckers are carpenters; they not only bore holes in trees in search of food, but they also chisel out deep holes in which to deposit their eggs and rear their young. They generally build their nest in May, selecting an old apple tree in the orchard; the boring is first done by the male, who pecks out a circular hole; as the work progresses, he is occasionally relieved by the female. They both work with great diligence, and as the hole deepens they carry out the chips, sometimes taking them some distance to prevent discovery or suspicion. The nest usually requires a week to build, and when the female is quite satisfied she deposits her eggs, generally six in number and of a pure white color.
A bird called the grosbeak builds a nest shaped like an inverted bottle with a long neck, through which it passes up to a snug little chamber above. The nest is skillfully constructed of soft vegetable substances, sewed together in a wonderful manner, and suspended from a twig of a bush.
The social weaver is found in the south of Africa. Hundreds of these birds, in one community, join to form a structure of interwoven grass containing various apartments, all covered by a sloping roof impenetrable to the heaviest rain, and increased year after year as the population of the little community may require.
A traveler, returned from a journey through South Africa, writes: “A tree with an enormous nest of these birds was quite near where our party camped for the night. I dispatched a few men with a wagon to bring it to the camp that I might open the hive and examine the nest in its minutest parts. When it arrived I cut it to pieces with a hatchet, and saw that the chief portion of the structure consisted of grass, without any mixture, but so compact and firmly woven together as to be impenetrable to the rain. This is a canopy under which each bird builds its particular nest; the canopy projects a little, which serves to let the water run off when it rains. The nest contained three hundred and twenty nests, and it was calculated that the number of birds would exceed six hundred in this one nest alone.”
The bottle-nested sparrow is a basket maker; it is found in India and is a very intelligent bird. It resembles our native sparrow in some particulars, but its color is brown and yellow. It associates in large communities and builds its nests on palm trees. It is formed in a very ingenious way, by long grasses woven together into the shape of a bottle, and it is then suspended at the extremity of a branch, in order to secure the eggs and young birds from numerous enemies, such as serpents, monkeys and other animals which infest that part of the world.
These nests excel in the neatness and delicacy of their workmanship. They contain several apartments intended for different purposes; in one the female deposits her eggs; in another is stored the food which the male gathers for his mate during her maternal duties, and a third is the sleeping apartment for the male bird.
The sand martin is a most curious member of the swallow tribe. It appears in the spring a week or two before the common swallow, and it is fond of skimming swiftly over the surface of the water. This bird makes a hole in a sand bank, sometimes two feet deep, at the extremity of which it constructs a loose nest of fine grass and feathers, in which it rears its young brood. The beak of the sand martin is like a sharp little awl, very hard, and tapering, suddenly to a point.
The tailor bird is not the least interesting of the bird family; it has a curious bill which it uses like a needle, and it forms its nest by sewing the materials together instead of weaving.
NEST OF TAILOR BIRD.
“The tailor bird,” says Darwin, “will not build its nest to the extremity of a tender twig, but makes one more advance to safety by fixing it to the leaf itself. It picks up a dead leaf and sews it to the side of a living one, its slender bill serving as a needle, and its thread some fine fibers; the lining consists of feathers, gossamer and down; its eggs are white; the color of the bird light yellow; its length three inches; its weight three-sixteenths of an ounce; so that the materials of the nest and the weight of the bird are not likely to draw down a habitation so slightly suspended.”
The different methods of nest building evidently result from the peculiarities of the birds themselves combined with their surroundings. Will these styles of architecture be changed or further developed?
Henry Coyle.