“22nd.—One or other of the two martins has, more than once, entered the nest usurped by the sparrows, so that I begin to doubt if the latter have really succeeded. As against this, however, I see both the sparrows, on the roof near, and the cock bird has twigs and grass in his bill. Yet, as long as I see them, they do not come to the nest. Nevertheless, another nest is now being begun, about a foot from the one they have invaded, and the birds building this, must, I feel sure, be the owners of the latter.
“23rd.—At 7 this morning the building of the new nest is going rapidly forward, but the hen sparrow, with a sinister look, sits near, in the gutter running round the roof. She has a little grass in her bill, and with this, after a while, she flies to the abandoned nest. She clings outside it, for a little, then, all at once, instead of entering, attacks the two martins building their new one, flying at each, in turn, and pecking them venomously. The martins do not resist, and soon take to flight, but once again the sparrow attacks them, with the grass still in her bill, before entering the old nest with it, as finally she does. Undeterred by these two attacks, the martins continue to ply backwards and forwards, ever building their nest. The hen sparrow soon flies out of her ill-gotten one, and away, and, shortly afterwards, the cock comes and sits on the piping, with a small tuft of moss and grass in his bill. For a most inordinate time he sits there, with these materials, and then, time and time again, he flies into a neighbouring tree, and returns with them, going off, still holding them, at last, without once having been to the nest. Meanwhile the hen has returned with a much more considerable supply, which she takes into the nest, at once. Afterwards she comes with more, but again her anger is aroused by the sight of the two poor martins, always building, and she flies at them, laden as she is, just as before. They take flight, as usual, but soon return, and continue industriously to build. Both are now doing so in the prettiest manner, lying side by side, but turned in opposite directions, so that each works at a different part of the nest. Then one of them flies eight times (if not more) to the nest, and away again, with a large piece of black mud protruding, all the while, from his bill, which is forced considerably open by it. He seems, each time, unable to bring it out, but, on the ninth return, succeeds in doing so—if, indeed, this is the explanation. When he flies in, this last time, it does not look such a bulk in the mouth as before. It may be—and this, perhaps, is more probable—that it had not before been sufficiently worked up with the salivary secretions, and that the bird was doing this, all the time, though making its little visits as a matter of custom. During the earlier ones he had the nest to himself, but, on the last, his partner was there, and he almost pushed her out of it, with a little haste-pleading twittering, seeming to say, ‘Mine is the greater need.’ Both the sparrows have been, several times, in and out of the old nest, during this, and sometimes sitting in it together. The hen is building in good, workmanlike fashion, whereas the cock contributes but little. The mud which these martins used to build with, was brought, by them, from a little puddle in the village street, till this became dry, after which I did not see where they went. I have seen quite a number of them, including some swallows, collecting it at a pond in a village near here. A very pretty sight it was, to see them all so busy, and doing something dirty so cleanly—for, after all, swallowing mud is dirty if looked at in a commonplace kind of way, though not at all so, really, if we consider the end to which it is done.
“30th.—Two more martlets are beginning a nest just above my bedroom window, and on the very mud-stains of their last one. Others seem choosing a site, for two pairs of them hang upon certain spots, twittering together, in a most talking manner, flying away, then, and returning to talk again, as if they were—not house-, but foundation-hunting. I notice that these birds, when they fly from the proposed or contemplated site, will often, after making a circle round, wheel in to the nest nearest to it, and, poised in the air, beneath the portal, take, as it were, a little friendly peep in. Yet it is not all friendly, for I have just seen a bird struggling for entrance, and expelled by the proprietor of the nest—by the one proprietor, I think, but both were at home, and my impression is that if only one had been, the visitor might have been well received, as, indeed, I have seen and recorded. Now, too, I have seen a fight in the air between two martins, à propos of an intended entrance on the part of one of them. House-martins, therefore, fight amongst themselves—as do sand-martins, very violently—and this makes their apparent total inability to defend themselves against the attacks of sparrows, the more remarkable. No doubt the sparrow is a stronger bird, but the martins, with their superior powers of flight, might annoy it incessantly when in the vicinity of the nest, to the extent, perhaps, of driving it away. That they should all combine for this purpose is, perhaps, too much to expect, but when one sparrow, only, attacks a pair of them, one might think that both would retaliate. As we have seen, however, a pair of martins, when attacked in this way upon three occasions quite failed to do so. Probably the period of fighting and striving has long ago been passed through, and the sparrow, having come the victor out of it, is now recognised as an inevitability. It is better for any pair of house-martins—and consequently for the race—to give up and build another nest, than to waste their time in efforts which, even if at last successful, would make them the parents of fewer offspring.
“June 1st.—The nest above my window has been built at a great rate, and is now almost finished. Compare this with the very slow building of some martins last year, and with Gilbert White’s general statement. There is no finality in natural history, and any one observation may be contradicted by any other. This nest, the day before yesterday, was only just beginning, and now it is almost finished. A layer of half an inch a day, therefore, is quite inadequate to the result, and so the supposed reason for the slow rate of advance, when the nest is built slowly, falls to the ground.[27] Late in the year, the nests do, sometimes, drop—by which I have made acquaintance with the grown young, and the curious parasitic fly upon them—but this, I think, belongs to the chapter of accidents, and is not to be avoided by any art or foresight of the bird. Other nests have now been begun, and these, like all the rest, as far as I can be sure of it, are on the exact sites of so many old ones. What interests me, however, is that, on two of these sites, nests, for some reason, were not built last year, though they were the year before. Possibly they were begun there last year, but destroyed without my knowledge (women and gardeners would do away with birds, between them), in which case no further attempt was made to build there. But this I do not think was the case. The birds, therefore—supposing them to be the same ones—missed a year, and then built in the same place as two years ago. There were only the stains of the old structures left, but these were covered by the fresh mud, as a head is by a skull-cap. These martins, therefore, assuming them to have been the same, must either not have built, last year, or, having had to build somewhere else, they must yet have remembered their old place of the year before, and come back to it.
“5th.—This evening I watched my martins from the landing window, at only a few yards’ distance. Two had made nests on a wall that stood, at an angle, just outside, and in either one or both of these nests, one of the two birds was usually sitting. Thus, either two or three more, as the case might be, were wanted to make up the two pairs that owned the two nests. But instead of two or three, often six or eight, at a time, would be fluttering under the nests, and a still greater number circled round about, from which these came, at intervals, to flutter there. That every one of these birds was interested, in some way and to some degree, in the two nests, was quite obvious. They seemed, often, on the point of clinging to one, with a view to entering it, and to be stopped, only, by the bird inside giving, each time, a funny little bubbling twitter, which seemed, by its effect, to mean, ‘No, not you; you’re not the right one.’ But whenever a bird did enter one of the nests, he flew straight at it, and was in, in a moment, being received—if the other one was at home—with a shriller and louder note, something like a scream. The harsher sound meant welcome, and the softer one, unwillingness.
“That there is some interest taken by the martins of a neighbourhood—or, at least, of any little colony—in the nests built by their fellows, seems clear, and I have recorded, both the friendly entries of one bird into two nests, each of which was occupied by another, and the struggles of two, to enter one, where, also, the partner bird, either of one or the other, was sitting. All these facts together seem best explained by supposing that the female house-martin is something of a light-o’-love, and that when she builds her nest, more than one male holds himself entitled to claim both it and her, as his own. If, for some reasons, we feel unable to adopt this view, we may fall back upon that of a social or communistic feeling, as yet imperfectly developed, and wavering, sometimes, between friendliness and hostility. Be it as it may, the facts which I have noted appear to me to be of interest. In regard to the last-mentioned one—the interest, namely, manifested by several birds, in nests not their own—White of Selborne says: ‘The young of this species do not quit their abodes all together; but the more forward birds get abroad some days before the rest. These, approaching the eaves of buildings, and playing about before them, make people think that several old ones attend one nest.’ How does this apply here? ‘Nohow,’ I reply (with Tweedledee), for no young birds could possibly have left the nests, at this date (June 5). I doubt, indeed, whether any eggs had been hatched. White, living in a southern county, says elsewhere (Letter LV.): ‘About the middle of May, if the weather be fine, the martin begins to think in earnest of providing a mansion for its family.’ This is my experience too, and in East Anglia, at any rate, where May is generally like a bad March, and often colder, I am sure he never thinks about it sooner. Neither in Dorsetshire, too, when I was last there, did any martins begin building, in a village where they build all down the street, before about the middle of May, as White says, and when I inquired for them, a week or ten days sooner, the cottage people, who must know their habits in this respect, told me it was too early for them yet. Elsewhere, ’tis true, we read that the martin ‘sets about building very soon after its return, which may be about the middle of April,’ though I never remember them here before May. This is not my experience, nor was it White’s, who says—and, I believe, with great correctness—‘For some time after they appear, the hirundines in general pay no attention to the business of nidification, but play and sport about, either to recruit from the fatigue of their journey, or,’ &c. &c. (Letter LV.) (the rest of the sentence is historically interesting). However, let some young martins, in some places, be as precocious as they like, this I know, that none were abroad in Icklingham, in the year 1901, upon the 5th of June. The several birds, therefore, that attended one nest in the way I have described, were old, and not young, birds, and I connect their conduct with those other cases I have mentioned, which point towards a socialistic tendency in this species.
“24th.—Watching from the landing window, this morning, I saw a house-martin attacked by another one, whilst entering its nest with some feathers. I called to our Hannah to bring my son’s fishing-rod, and never took my eyes off the nest, whilst she was coming with it. Meanwhile, one martin had come out, and, on my touching the nest with the rod, a second did, also. One of a pair, therefore, had, by making its nest, excited the anger of a third bird, and this I have seen more than once. Is the angry bird, in such cases, a mere stranger, or is it a rival, in some way? If the last—and the other seems unlikely—does one hen consort with two or more cocks, or vice versâ? I have noticed, however, with more than one kind of bird, that the hens seem jealous of each other collecting materials for the nest.[28]
“August 3rd.—It is customary for two of the young martins to sit with their heads looking out at the door of the nest—very pretty they look—and ever and anon one of the parent birds will fly in to them, as she circles round, and hanging there, just for a moment, there is a little twittering chorus—mostly I think from the chicks—and off she flies again. It is difficult to be quite sure whether, in these short flying visits, the chicks are really fed. Sometimes they are so short that this seems hardly possible. At others something does seem to pass, and the mouth of one of the chicks may be seen opened, just after the parent flies off. Yet it hardly seems like serious feeding. But at this very moment a bird has, thus, flown in to the young, and one of them, I am sure, was, this time, fed. This has happened again—and yet again—but now, this last time, the parent bird has entered the nest. The time before, whilst the one parent was hanging there, and, I think, giving the chick something, the other flew in to the wall, and clung there, about six inches off, seeming to watch the scene with pleased attention. Yet, though food does, as I now feel sure, sometimes pass in these visits, at others, as it seems to me, only remarks do. At this stage of the argument, one of the young birds projects its tail through the entrance-hole, and voids its excrement. Under this nest and another one, about two feet from it, there is a heap of excrement on the slanting roof of the greenhouse below; an interesting thing to see, and cleanly if rightly considered, yet unsightly I must confess—that part of it, alone, exists for the feminine eye. Out comes another tail, now, and the heap is increased. In this pretty way the nest is kept pure and wholesome.
“Now I have had a fine view of the feeding, having moved into a better position. The parent bird clung to the nest, and one of the chicks, thrusting out its head from the aperture, opened its mouth, so that it looked like a little round funnel. Into this the parent bird thrust not only her bill, but the upper part of her head as well, and the chick’s mouth closing upon it, there instantly began, on the part of both, those motions which accompany the process of regurgitation, as it may be witnessed with pigeons, and as I have witnessed it with nightjars. These becoming more and more violent, the parent bird was, at last, drawn by the chick, who kept pulling back upon her, into the nest—that, at least, was the appearance presented. For some moments only the posterior part of the dam’s body could be seen projecting through the aperture, and this continued to work violently, in the manner indicated. Then she disappeared altogether. A few minutes afterwards, another and much more lengthy visit is paid, by one of the old birds, to the nest, but, this time, though a young one looks out with open mouth, no feeding takes place.
“I have now to record that a bird about to enter the next nest to this, from which another, whose snowy throat proclaims it to be full-grown, has just looked out, is attacked, as it clings to the mud, and driven off, by a third bird. In the course of some few minutes this occurs twice again, the attack, each time, being very fierce, and the struggle more prolonged. And now, but shortly afterwards, the same two birds (as I make no doubt) fly, together, on to the nest, and both enter it, shouldering and pushing one another. They are in it some time, during which I can make nothing out clearly. Then one emerges, and I can see that the other has hold of him with the beak, detaining him slightly, as he flies away. This other, in a moment, flies out too, and then the head of a third—the one, no doubt, that has been in the nest, all the time—appears at the entrance, as before. Now this nest, though so late in the season, has the appearance of being a new one. It even seems not yet entirely finished, though nearly so. Perhaps it has been repaired, but, in any case, there are no young birds in it, nor do I think the old ones are sitting again, yet—for probably there have been earlier broods. If we assume this, and that two out of the three birds are the mated pair, then we must suppose either that, all the while, a rival male has continued to fight for the possession of the nest and the female, or that two females lay claim to the nest, and have, perhaps, helped to build it. If this latter be the case, we may, perhaps, see in it an extension of that spirit of jealousy or rivalry which I have often observed in female birds, whilst collecting materials for their respective nests. Is it possible that such feelings may have led to that habit which the females of some birds have (or are supposed to have) of laying their eggs in one common nest? But I do not suppose so. In this case, as before, it appears that one of the rival birds—male or female—is preferred by the bird in the nest, for this one, now, as the prevailing party flies in and clings on the parapet, breaks into a perfect jubilee of twitterings, and fuller, croodling notes, that may almost be called song—very pretty indeed, and extremely pleasing to hear. Evidently either two males have fought for access to a female—or two females to a male—in a nest which one, or both, or all three have helped to make; but the difficulty in distinguishing the sexes prevents one from saying which of these two it is. Meanwhile the parent bird has, for long, clung to the other nest, without feeding the young.