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Show Nests Prove Eirds to Es Master Architects The word nest is pretty of itself and expressive of all homeliness. In the kingdom of the birds, writes .T. It. Raynor in the London Daily Telegraph,' Tele-graph,' there are homes which are masterpieces of instinctive architecture, architec-ture, all varied In design, but each one built to serve the great purpose of home and family. The agile and Intelligent builders had no bodkin to insert, no thread to bind ; a little beak was all. Long-tailed tits, those animated arrows ar-rows that flit about the woodland, work prodigiously day by day to produce pro-duce that amazing hall of moss, fine grasses, lichens and feathers, with its side entrance, high in the hedgerow. hedge-row. It is recorded that 2.370 feathers feath-ers were counted as part of the structure of one nest. While these and other birds of branch and hedgerow are carrying materials the woodpecker perseveres with the loud tap, tap, tap of his powerful bill on the defective tree trunk, chipping out a home for his family deep in the heart of the tree. The swallow, with tireless energy, devotes all his mornings to mixing and affixing clay which shall bind itself to the wall and which will bake dry in the sun. The swallow's nest is like half a shallow dish, with the top always open to the flir, just under the eaves. . High on the rocks above the waves of the sea the guillemot places her single pear-shaped egg on a narrow ledge. A layer of seaweed holds it, and when the stormy winds do blow this egg rolls round and round on its axis, seldom falling over the edge. By lake and pond the grebes and coots make sound foundations of dried rushes for their floating homesteads. home-steads. On the fallow field the lapwing lap-wing excavates the slightest hollow for her four dark, mottled eggs. These, set with points to the center, cannot roll or move. |
