The architecture of birds / [Anon].

Rennie, James, 1787-1867.

Date:: [1831]

Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The architecture of birds / [Anon]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

147/428 (page 115)

to the nest, proves that these birds can, upon oc- casion, change the usual arrangement of their archi- tecture. Another pair, mentioned by Bingley, built for two successive seasons on the handles of a pair of garden-shears, which had been stuck up against the boards in an out-house. A still more singular in- stance is recorded of another pair, which built their nest on the wings and body of a dead owl, hung up on the rafter of a barn, and so loose as to be moved by every gust of wind. This owl, with the nest on its wings, and the eggs in the nest, was brought as a curiosity to the museum of Sir Ashton Lever, who, struck with the oddity of the thing, desired a large shell to be fixed up where the owl had hung ; and the following season a nest, as had been anti- _cipated, was built there, and was transmitted to the Leverian Museum as a companion to the owl.* The chimney-swallow differs from the window- swallow, according to Montbeillard, in not occupying the same nest more than one season, building annually a new nest, and, if the spot admits it, fixing it above that occupied the preceding year. ‘I have found them,’ says he, ‘ in the shaft of a chimney, thus ranged in tiers, and have counted four, one above another, and all of equal size, plastered with mud mixed with straw and hair. ‘There were some of two: different sizes and shapes, — the largest resembled a shallow half-cylinder, open above, a foot in height, and attached to the sides of the chimney; the smallest were stuck in the corners of the chimney, forming only a fourth of a cylinder, or almost an inverted cone. The first nest, which was the lowest, had the same texture at the bottom as at the sides ; but the two upper tiers were separated from the lower by their lining only, which consisted of straw, dry herbs, * Anim. Biog. iii, 363.