Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 1 (1897).djvu/478

450 seeds in the mud with which the interior of the nest was plastered. There was only one egg, of a dull blue colour, with maroon spots on the larger end.

Swallows often build their nests in remarkable situations. Every year their dwellings may be seen in the coprolite sheds belonging to artificial manure works near Thetford, where the smell is indescribable. One's olfactory organs must be affected before realizing what it is; but these Swallows seem to pay no heed, and rear their broods each year in safety. Swallows also build in the shops of the engineering works in this town, threading their way unerringly through the revolving shafting, and quite unmindful of the clang of the machinery. Nests, too, are to be found each year on the joists beneath Aldeby Swing Bridge, near Beccles, continually subject to the rattling and rolling of the trains above them, and the snorting of steamers beneath. In a boat-house at Martham this year, a Swallow's nest was found built in the folds of a sail which had there been stored. I was also struck by the fact in a recent visit to Rievaulx Abbey, Yorkshire, that almost without exception there was a Swallow's nest in each of the pointed arches of the Early English windows. But for queer nooks and crannies in which to place nests, no bird can approach the Blue Titmouse in its choice. It would seem to be the exception rather than the rule to find a nest of this bird where one would expect it. Each year there is a nest in the letter-box of the Ink Factory at Barsham, and for many years a "blue jimmy" used the village postal wall-box at Kilverstone for purposes of nidification. In 1894 a Blue Tit safely reared its brood in a crack about half an inch in width in the axle of one of the staunches on the river Little Ouse, although people in crossing from one side of the river to the other generally used this axle as a hand-rail. At the same time there were eight callow youngsters in a nest built in the crack between two bricks from which the mortar had been weathered away in a wall near Thetford. In the spring of this year a friend found a Blue Tit's nest in a hollow gate-post, and with misdirected zeal split the post down the middle until the nest was reached. In spite of this, the parent bird refused to leave the eggs, which were on the point of being hatched, allowing herself to be lifted off the nest without any sign of fear. A still more curious instance has been published in the