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.