There is no topic in natural history so interesting as the architecture
of birds; in the building of their nests they are exceedingly ingenious.
We may well learn a lesson from the patience, diligence and perseverance
which they display. Just as men are skilled in different mechanical
employments, so we find in the bird tribe miners, masons, carpenters,
weavers, basket-makers and tailors.
[Illustration: HUMMING BIRD’S NEST.]
The humming bird constructs its nest of the finest silky down, and of
cotton, or if these are not available, some other similar material.
The inside is lined in the most delicate manner with soft substances;
the outside is covered with moss, usually the color of the bough or
twig to which the nest is attached, thus giving it the appearance of an
excrescence. The delicacy and ingenuity of workmanship and skill could
hardly be excelled by human art.
The humming bird is the “fairy of the feathered race”—the smallest and
most beautiful—and they are found almost all over this continent. Most of
them, however, dwell in the far South, where flowers are ever in bloom,
and summer reigns all the year round. One species alone visits our chill
Northern States—the humming bird with the ruby throat. It comes to us in
July and is very shy; its stay is very short, for toward the first of
September it departs to a warmer climate.
[Illustration: WOODPECKER DRILLING A HOLE FOR A NEST.]
It is only in tropical countries that the several species of humming bird
are seen in their abundance and variety. The islands between Florida and
the main land of South America literally swarm with them. In the wild and
uncultivated parts they inhabit the magnificent forests overhung with
rare plants, whose blossoms vie in beauty with the jewel-like brilliancy
of these animate gems of the air. In the cultivated portions of the
country they abound in the gardens and seem to delight in society.
Lovely and full of nervous energy, these winged gems are constantly
in the air, darting from one object to another, and displaying their
gorgeous colors in the sunlight. When on a long journey, as during
migration, they pass through the air in long undulations, raising
themselves to a considerable height and then falling so as to form a
curve. When feeding on a flower they keep themselves poised in one
position as steadily as if suspended on a bough—making a humming sound
with the rapid motion of their wings.
In disposition these little creatures are bold and pugnacious. In
defending their nests they will attack birds five times their size and
drive them off. When angry, their motions are very violent and their
flight as swift as an arrow. Often the eye is incapable of following
them, and their shrill, piercing note alone announces their presence.
Among the most dazzling of this brilliant tribe is the bar-tailed humming
bird of Brazil. The tail is forked at the base, and consists of five
feathers, graduated one above another, at almost equal distances. Their
color is of the richest flame; the upper part of the body is golden
green, and the under part emerald.
There are more than a hundred kinds of these birds, and all are noted for
their surpassing beauty. What a beautiful conception in the author of
nature were these exquisite little creatures! It is as if the flowers had
taken wings, and life, and intelligence, to share in the sports of animal
life.
[Illustration: NESTS OF THE BOTTLE BIRD.]
The nest of the golden-crested wren, a most beautiful bird found in
England and other parts of Europe, is a fine example of weaving. It is
made of moss and lichen, and lined with feathers; it has a very small
entrance at the top and the interior of the nest is also small, bearing
no proportion to the size of the structure. The weaving of this nest is
a work of great labor and assiduity, and compared with the bulk of the
bird, it is of large dimensions.
[Illustration: NESTS OF SOCIAL WEAVERS.]
The nest is suspended from the under surface of a fir branch, thickly
clothed with foliage, by which it is almost entirely concealed and partly
protected from the rain. Thus, beneath a natural canopy, this little bird
rears her brood, whose cradle swings to and fro with every breeze. The
eggs are from seven to ten in number, and of a pale brown color.
A naturalist who watched a nest containing eight small birds with a
powerful opera glass, observed that the parent birds came to the nest
with food every two minutes, or upon an average thirty-six times in an
hour; and this continued full sixteen hours a day, which, if equally
divided between the brood, each would receive seventy-two feeds, the
whole amounting to five hundred and seventy-six!
[Illustration: 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.
[Illustration: NEST OF TAILOR BIRD.]
“The tailor bird,” says Darwin, “will not build its nest to the extremity
of a tender twig, but makes one more advance to safety by fixing it to
the leaf itself. It picks up a dead leaf and sews it to the side of a
living one, its slender bill serving as a needle, and its thread some
fine fibers; the lining consists of feathers, gossamer and down; its eggs
are white; the color of the bird light yellow; its length three inches;
its weight three-sixteenths of an ounce; so that the materials of the
nest and the weight of the bird are not likely to draw down a habitation
so slightly suspended.”
The different methods of nest building evidently result from the
peculiarities of the birds themselves combined with their surroundings.
Will these styles of architecture be changed or further developed?