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Here and there they meet with smaller flocks, which have been able to spend the winter in roving about not far from their nesting places, and then there is a great deal of talking; for the Robin has a great many ways of making remarks. Some of his numerous notes sound as if he were asking a long list of questions; others express discontent; then again he fumes and sputters with anger.
When I arrived, hat in hand, he smiled, examined my firearms, and proceeded for sport, leading the way to a high tree, on which some adjutant birds were nesting, and numerous vultures resting. I begged him to take a shot himself, as I really could not demean myself by firing at birds sitting on a tree; but it was all of no use no one could shoot as I could, and they must be shot.
"I played against you, for the Free Foresters last summer. In passing you seem to be a bit of a free forester yourself, dancing in among my nesting pheasants." "I'm frightfully sorry." "That's all right. Where do you spring from?" "Of course I remember you now. You're Prendergast. You made fifty-eight not out." "Thanks.
Ten days had gone by since he had fled across the Valley, but the danger of pursuit had not passed and, as he saw a great owl that was nesting down below rise up blindly and flop away he paused and reached for his gun. "Never mind," said the Colonel who had noticed the movement. "I expect an old Indian in with grub.
In spring, after spending the winter in rich southern climes, these birds, following the returning warmth, slowly migrate to Siberia for nesting. They pass through Central China during May, arriving almost simultaneously, when for about three weeks one can have superb sport, and then they depart as suddenly as they came. One day they will swarm, and the next hardly a bird is to be seen.
Grace Ferrall pointed one out to me last winter, near Palm Beach a slender bird, part black, part snowy white, with long, pointed, delicate wings like an enormous swallow; and all day, all night, it floats and soars and drifts in the upper air, never resting, never alighting except during its brief nesting season. Think of the exquisite bliss of drifting one's life through in mid-air to sleep, balanced on light wings, upborne by invisible currents flowing under the stars to sail dreamily through the long sunshine, to float under the moon! And at last, I suppose, when its time has come, down it whirls out of the sky, stone dead! There is something thrilling in such a death something magnificent. And in the exquisitely spiritual honeymoon, vague as the shadow of a rainbow, is the very essence and aroma of that impalpable Paradise we women prophesy in dreams! More sentiment!
Still farther away from the typical Flycatcher's nest is that made by a perfectly regular member of the family, the Great-crested Flycatcher. The straw and other substances it collects as a bed for its eggs and young is carried into some hollow tree, old Woodpecker hole, or nesting box.
It is the most narrowly local and stay-at-home of all birds, never leaving the very fringe and margin, not of sea, but of land, haunting only the last edge and precipice of the coast, nesting on those upright walls of granite or chalk, and creeping, flying, and twittering among the crumbling stones, the water-worn boulders, and the tufts of sea-pink and samphire.
Martin houses should be erected on poles at least twenty feet high, placed well out in the open, not less than one hundred feet from buildings or large trees. All boxes should be taken down after the nesting season and the old nesting material removed. Size of Bird Boxes.
It was stupendous, and to describe it properly would take a better pen than mine. Of course there were recesses overhead where the light could not penetrate, and these were the homes of millions of small bats, of which more presently. As for the birds themselves, this was one of their nesting seasons, and the cave was full of myriads of them.
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