Page:The Common Birds of Bombay.djvu/149

Rh branch, with nothing directly under it, and, as a Palm Tree affords many such situations, a palm tree, especially a Date Palm, is often fixed upon by a whole company. In the museum of the Bombay Natural History Society there is a branch of a Brab Palm with fourteen nests attached to it. Where Palms are scarce a thorny Babul or Bore tree, drooping over a tank, is a favourite site for a colony. But you may find single nests, or groups of nests, in all sorts of situations. Jerdon says that in Burma the eaves of a thatched bungalow are often fringed with nests. He counted over a hundred hanging from the roof of a single bungalow in Rangoon. One thing to note is that there is never the slightest attempt at concealment. The Weaver Bird will not elude its enemies: it defies them. Having fixed on a site, the birds go to work with a will, making their own yarn and weaving from dawn till evening. Several kinds of material are used. The best is very thin strips of cocoanut leaves. The bird notches the edge of a leaf with its beak, and then by main force tears off a long, thin fibre, scarcely thicker than darning cotton. Any kind of rank grass can be treated in the same way of course, and is much easier to rend than a palm leaf, but the fibres are softer and not nearly so strong. Grass nests are, therefore, always more bulky and less closely woven than those made of palm leaf. The process of building is as follows. The fibres are first wound and twined very securely about the twigs and leaves at the end of the branch, and then platted into each other to form a stalk, or neck, several inches in length. As this progresses it is gradually expanded in the form of an inverted wine-glass, or a bell, till it is large