after it has reached us it commonly keeps pretty close to
streams or ponds, over which it may be seen taking its food
with the curious jerking flight, so well noted by Gilbert
White, and it does not seek its breeding-quarters till towards
the end of April or beginning of May.
Like the species already described, this bird comes
to us no doubt from Africa, and almost always chooses its
nesting-place in the banks of rivers, sand-pits, railway-
cuttings, and other vertical surfaces of earth of a nature
that will enable it to perforate them for its purpose. In
such situations it bores horizontal galleries with a degree of
regularity, and an amount of labour, rarely exceeded among
birds. The mode in which these holes are made has
been described more or less fully by White, Rennie, and
Macgillivray’s correspondents—Messrs. Duncan and Weir.
When beginning its excavation, the bird clings to the face
of the hank, steadying itself by its tail, and, using its hill
as a pickaxe, loosens the earth, wdiich at first falls down by
its own weight clear of the hole. In doing this the bird
works from the centre outwards, assuming all sorts of positions,
and as often as not hangs head downwards while
grasping the circumference with its claws. When the hole
is carried further the same method is pursued, but the
detached soil has then to he scraped out by its feet, since
the gallery though generally sloping upwards from the
entrance is too nearly horizontal for the earth to run out of
itself. The form of the boring and its length seem to
depend much on the nature of the soil. Dry, friable sand,
though easily pierced, has its disadvantages in the crumbling
of the sides, especially as the bird is breaking ground, till a
large irregular hole is made, and then the burrow is extended
perhaps to four, six, or, as one authority says, even nine feet.
Harder sand, lying often in layers, produces shorter tunnels,
from eighteen inches to three feet in length, with an oval or
oblong section, and it is only in very tenacious soil that the
graphs are nothing but Sand-Martins, the difference in the plumage and flight of
the two species, obvious at a glance to an expert, being unknown to the casual
opening is really circular. The intention seems to be that
the gallery should he straight, but inequalities of the
ground, and the occurrence of stones, frequently cause it to
take a sinuous course, and the little miner often meets
with a stone too big to be removed or evaded, in which case
the hole is abandoned, and a fresh attempt made. Both the
partners in the undertaking seem to work at it by turn, and
operations are seldom carried on except in the early morning.
When the gallery is bored far enough, and what determines
this is not always apparent, the end is slightly enlarged
to form a chamber, and hither are brought materials for the
nest, consisting chiefly of 4ry grass-stalks, or near the coast
(as Wolley found at Bridlington) of seaweed, to serve as a
loose foundation, on which is laid a bed of feathers, which
seem to he collected from some neighbouring water, and
these last are invariably disposed with much neatness, so that
a Sand-Martin’s nest, carefully removed from its grave is a
beautiful object.*
The eggs are commonly from four to six in number,
though late in the season not more than two or three are
laid, and are translucent white, measuring from -78 to ’6 by
from *52 to '45 in. Since the species is pretty numerous
and places fitted for its subterranean nurseries are sometimes
far apart, it throngs to those that are favourable, and
in such cases the nests are often made close together, so
that the face of the bank is riddled with its holes, in a way
that has suggested to many the comparison with a honeycomb.
Depth of soil has nothing to do with the occupation
of a locality by the Sand-Martin. It will drive its galleries
into the middle of a bluff a hundred feet high, or be content
with the thin layer of mould, hardly exceeding eighteen
inches, that in some spots caps the side of a chalk-cutting.
Nor is height more regarded, for the nests may be found at
almost any distance from either top or bottom of a suitable
escarpment, and a shallow sand-pit, that will hardly hide a
* Those who have dug out the nests of this bird need not be reminded of the
inconvenience which the operation is likely to produce from the swarms of fleas,
with which, towards the end of summer, they are infested.