United States or Saint Lucia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
It is curious that in this country, so subject to cold and cold winds, so many houses are built to face north or east, and this fact often compels the house-martin to build that side, the back of a house being frequently obstructed. In the case of house No. 1 there was a clear take-off on the north side, also with the stable.
Houses are generally built to face the road, quite irrespective of the aspect, which custom is the origin of many cheerless dwellings. I think that house-martin fledglings and eggs are capable of enduring the utmost heat of our English summer, and the nests found deserted were abandoned for some other reason.
There are four kinds of swallows the Swift, the Chimney-swallow, the House-martin, and the Sand-martin; they all look much alike when on the wing, but there are differences, especially in the sort of nest which they build. The house-martin makes its nest of mud, lined with grass or feathers, against the side of a house, and there lays its beautiful white eggs.
To collect this rope of variously-tinted beads a natural rosary he had sought the mossy and hair-lined nest of the hedge-sparrow for her turquoise-like rounds; had scrambled up the chimney-corner to bear away those pearls of the land, the small white eggs of the house-martin; had found deposited in an old magpie's nest the ovals of the sparrow-hawk, red and smooth as the finest coral; had dived into the ground-mansion of the skylark for her lilac-tinted shells, and groped amongst the bushes for the rosy-tinted ones of the woodlark; climbed the tallest trees for the sea-green eggs of the rooks; had pilfered the spotted treasures from the snug dwelling which the wren constructed in the eaves; and, worst of all I hardly like to write it, I hardly care to think, that Jesse could have committed such an outrage, saddest and worst of all, in the very midst of that varied garland might be seen the brown and dusky egg, as little showy as its quaker-like plumage, the dark brown egg, from which should have issued that "angel of the air," the songstress, famous in every land, the unparagoned nightingale.
Then came other tyrant-birds and the loved swallows the house- swallow, which resembles the English house-martin, the large purple martin, the Golodrina domestica, and the brown tree-martin. Then, too, came the yellow-billed cuckoo the kowe-kowe as it is called from its cry.
For ages it has also been remarked that the house-martin likes the proximity of man, and will build by choice in or over a porch or doorway, whether of house or stable, or over a window somewhere where man is about.
The house-martin is a really clever builder; he takes little mouthfuls of clay in his beak and sticks them one by one under the deep overhanging tiles or slates of a house or barn, and gradually forms a complete nest like a ball of clay, which dries hard, and is stuck against the wall, with only one opening like a lip at the top.
White's little Chartreuse; but the arrival of the house-martin a day earlier or later than last year is a piece of news worth sending express to all his correspondents. La Grande Chartreuse was the original Carthusian monastery in France, where the most austere privacy was maintained.
So far as my observation goes, I think the house-martin with all the swallow tribe prefers warmth, and, if possible, chooses the sunny side of a building.
Word Of The Day