Others, like the kingfisher, the sand-swallow, and certain sea-birds, make or find holes in earth-banks and rocky cliffs, so that their babies are born in a tiny cave. All of our swallows, before the country was settled by white people, lived in this manner or in hollow trees; but as soon as civilization came those we soon named barn-swallows left the wilds and put their nests under the roofs of barns and other outbuildings. Then some one, remembering the ways of old England, began to put bird-houses in the gardens; and now, in all parts of the United States, you may find those cousins of the swallows, the purple martins, living by the dozen in these lofty little hotels on the top of a pole.
The nests of the cliff-swallows are little jugs of mud, plastered by their bases to the face of the rock. The birds make them by bringing pellets of mud in their bills from some stream-side, and putting them one upon another, until each pair has formed a windowless, bottle-like house, with a front door like the neck of the jug, so small that no big bird can enter it. These are very safe and snug nests, and the birds can sit in their doorways and gossip with each other very sociably, for the nests are crowded together like the houses in a city block. This is the same kind of swallow that now puts its nest in rows along the outside of our barns under the eaves; but often they are mere cups instead of jugs, because the barn roof sheds the rain, and a clay roof is no longer necessary to protect the feather bed inside.
Another one of the small birds that is more and more coming to seek our protection and sympathy is the greenish-brown flycatcher that (as some folks think) calls out her own name every few minutes, Phoebe, Phoebe. She makes her home very solidly of mud and moss, lined with horse-hair, and in the old days always rested it on a ledge of rock, as many still do. Most of the phoebes, however, now think it easier and safer to get under a roof, and so they put their mossy cups on the stone piers or supporting timbers of bridges, among the rafters of sheds and porches, and in similar places.
A great number and wide variety of birds make their houses upon the ground. Most of the sea-birds do so—along the ledges of the sea-cliff. Nearly all the water fowl and game birds (except herons) also do so; and most of the ducks and similar birds nestle among the wet reeds of marshes, where their rude bedding is damp all the time and sometimes soaking wet. To keep their eggs warm when they have to leave them for a time, many of the ducks pluck a large quantity of downy feathers from their breasts with which to cover the eggs. The eider of the arctic regions is the foremost in this practice, and the eider-down sold in shops is gathered from their nests; but it is a habit of many other ducks. One of the most interesting of these ground-nest birds is the least bittern, a solitary bird frequenting swamps and marshy places.
Not only the water-birds, however, but some of the smallest and prettiest of our songsters choose to dwell and lay their eggs close to the ground, although they seem to be exposed there to many more dangers than are those in the treetops or elsewhere. None try more anxiously to hide their homes than do these ground-nesters, arching the grasses above them, or building little sheds of leaves to protect and hide the shining eggs. (Adapted.)
HATTO THE HERMIT: THE
LEGEND OF A BIRD'S NEST
Selma Lagerlöf
Hatto, the hermit, stood in the desert and prayed to God. The storm was on, and his long hair and beard blew about him as wind-whipped grass blows about an old ruin. But he did not brush back the hair from his eyes, nor did he fasten his long beard to his girdle, for his arms were raised in prayer. Since sunrise he had held his gaunt, hairy arms out-stretched toward heaven, as untiring as a tree stretching out its boughs, and thus he would remain until evening. It was a great thing for which he was praying.
He was a man who had suffered much from the wickedness and dishonesty of the world. He himself had persecuted and tortured others, and persecution and torture had been his portion, more than he could endure. Therefore, he had gone forth into the wilderness, had dug himself a cave on the river bank, and had become a holy man whose prayers found hearing at the throne of God.
Hatto, the hermit, stood on the river bank before his cave and prayed the great prayer of his life. He prayed God to send down the Day of Judgment upon this wicked world. He cried to the angels of the trumpets, who are to herald the end of the reign of sin.
Round about him was the wilderness, barren and desolate. But a little up the bank stood an old willow with shortened trunk, which swelled out at the top of a round hump like a queer head, and from it new, freshly green twigs were sprouting. Every autumn the peasants from the unwooded flatlands robbed the willow of her fresh new shoots. But every year the tree put forth new ones, and on stormy days the slender, flexible twigs whipped about the old willow, as hair and beard whipped about Hatto, the hermit.