Harper's Young People, May 16, 1882 / An Illustrated Weekly

by Various

But alas! Though their cause was just, and they were only fighting in defense of their home, they were defeated after all. The next morning about ten o'clock the swallows dashed in again, and the battle raged as fiercely as ever, and before noon the poor linnets were driven off, not to return. They were completely quelled, and for a day or two hung about the place disconsolately, but at the end of that time they recovered their spirits, selected a place on the other side of the house, where they built a new nest, and went on with their housekeeping with as much contentment apparently as though no evil had happened.

BARN-SWALLOWS' NEST.

The swallows had won their house-lot, and they speedily began to build. The linnets' nest was beautifully made of soft grasses and hair and other fibrous materials, and the first thing which the swallows did was to plaster that across the top solidly with mud, so as to make a foundation on which they could work. The barn-swallows always construct their nests of mud, mixing with it a small number of pieces of straw or grass. They heap up the mud until often the nest weighs as much as two pounds, and then the hollow top is beautifully lined with soft materials, grasses, feathers, etc., on which the eggs are laid.

These swallows went on as usual, and just as though they had not obtained their home by robbery and violence. They reared their brood of young ones, and in the fall all flew away to the south with the others of their kind.

In the spring of 1872 the scene was repeated. A pair of linnets—probably the same pair—built their nest on the same post, but it was necessarily placed on the top of the swallows' nest of the last year. Their work was completed just before the swallows arrived. One pair of the latter appeared to understand that the place belonged to them, for without any delay or hesitation they attacked the linnets furiously, and after a conflict lasting until the second day, drove them away, buried the soft nest in mud as before, and occupied the spot as their home for the summer.

The same thing transpired in 1873, and when I saw the structure in 1874 it had occurred for the fourth time. The linnets had built and been driven away, the swallows had occupied the field, and I saw the female bird sitting quietly on her eggs in a nest which was in the summit of a strange-looking pillar. The pillar was a rough mass, four or five inches in diameter, and more than a foot high, composed of eight layers. The layer at the bottom was very thin, of hair and grass, the one above it being a solid heap of mud more than three inches thick, then a thin one again, and so on until the swallows' nest at the top made the eighth.

You can easily see that the linnets' soft nest would be crushed down by the great weight of mud heaped on it, and would thus make only the thin layers as stated. It was plain that no such scene could be witnessed the next year, for the successive building of the nests had heaped up the mass until it almost touched the roof above it. In fact, the swallow had barely room to creep into her nest and out of it. I saw her come and go, and each time her back rubbed against the shingles. When she had settled down on her eggs, she had, of course, a little more free space.

Now what do you say? Did not both the linnets and the swallows know the old nest, and did not they consider that it belonged to them individually, and that they were determined to occupy it because it belonged to them, and then to fight for the possession of it if necessary? Otherwise why should the linnets in 1872 have persisted in building on the top of the swallows' nest? There were other posts all around the veranda, each one of them just as good as that, so far as I could judge, and then, too, that one was spoiled by having the nest already there, for the linnets are not in the habit of building where another nest has occupied the place. But no: that spot was theirs, and they had been unjustly driven from it the year before, and they seemed to consider that, though it was not so convenient as a dozen other places close at hand, justice to themselves required that they should assert their ownership. No birds with spirit could allow themselves to be despoiled of their rightful possession in any such manner. Then presently came the swallows, with just the same feelings, and the battle followed.