boy, will serve its ends as well as a lofty precipice. It has
some of the adaptiveness of its relatives. In Norway it will
make its nest in the turf-roof of a hut, and in England
it has been often known to breed in holes in old walls.*
Dr. Norman Moore tells us, in his life of Waterton (p. 125),
how that ingenious naturalist fitted more than fifty holes in
a walled bank with draining-pipes, that they might form
nesting-places for this species, and that the year they were
completed every hole was tenanted. But perhaps a more
singular case still is that, discovered by Mr. E. Bidwell (Zool.
s.s. p. 5108), and confirmed by Mr. Upcher, of its breeding
in some numbers in huge heaps of sawdust near Brandon.
The young are fed with gnats and other small insects,
and, sometimes, according to White, with dragon-flies almost
as long as themselves. When they leave the nest they sit
for a time on any convenient perch, and are so unsuspicious of
evil that they may be easily taken by the hand. A little later
they fly with their parents, from whom they receive food on
the wing, the act being so rapidly performed that it escaped
bis observant eye. Afterwards, like other species of the
family, they get their own living, chiefly over the surface of
water, and roost in swarms on the trees or among the
vegetation at its side. The notes of this species are quite
inexpressible by any combination of letters. The most
ordinary is a low complacent chirp, which is quickly changed
to a loud and angry cry on the approach of danger. The
cock has a very gay, twittering song, commonly delivered on
the wing near the nest. At least two broods are hatched in
the course of the season, but the Sand-Martin leaves this
country earlier than either of its allies. Towards the end
of August, the numbers at its breeding-places are visibly
* White mentions its breeding in the scaffold-holes of an ancient building at
Bishop’s Waltham, and the like has been noticed in the crumbling mortar of old
walls at Godstow by two observers (Zool. p. 7844, and s.s. p. 2344)—the latter of
whom, Mr. 0. B. Wharton, “ found a nest about a foot down a hole in the gnarled
stem of an elm tree, which itself grows out from beneath the masonry.” Mr.
Harvie Brown in Scotland saw numbers of the species flying into and resting in
holes in an old wall, though he could not be sure that they nested there (op. cit.
p. 897), while Mr. Prior, near Bedford, had proof of the fact (Zool. 1877, p. 450).
thinned, but myriads continue to haunt the larger rivers.
About the beginning or middle of September these take
their departure, and by the third week of that month it is
rare to see a single bird. Nor do stray examples ordinarily
appear afterwards, as is so commonly the case with the
Swallow and the House-Martin. Mr. W. Jeffery, however,
in 1867 (Zool. s.s. p. 1033) noticed the Sand-Martin in
Sussex until October 6 th ; Thompson mentions its having
been observed at Wexford, October 31st; and, according
to Kinahan (Zool. p. 6962), it occurred in the county
Limerick, November 30th, 1859—the latest date known
to the Editor. In spring, too, exceptional arrivals are
very rare, the earliest on record being apparently that by
Mr. D’Urban (Zool. p. 5098) at Exeter, March 18th, 1856,
which is certainly not more than ten days sooner than its
ordinary coming.
The Sand-Martin is generally but rather locally distributed
throughout the British Islands, including most of the
Outer Hebrides and Orkney, but it is not known to breed in
Shetland though often appearing there. On the continent
of Europe it goes nearly as far as the North Cape, and
thence is found across the Russian dominions to the Sea of
Ochotsk, being very numerous in many places. It is supposed
to have been obtained in Japan (Ibis, 1878, p. 231)
and is numerous in China, but its southern range in Asia
is not at all known. Mr. Davidson (Stray Feathers, vi. p.
44) found it common in winter in the Thatone subdistrict of
Tennasserim, and at the. same season it visits several parts of
India, but not, as would seem, the southern half of the peninsula,
and from Mr. Hume’s experience it must be rare.
Thence it is found in Afghanistan, Persia and Arabia. In
Africa it had not been till lately known to reach further to
the southward than Zanzibar on the east coast, though
Canon Tristram, who saw a few at El Aghouat in November,
thought that it did not winter in the Sahara, and Drake
believed the same of it as concerns Eastern Morocco; but
the receipt by Mr. Gurney of several specimens from Transvaal
greatly extends its range. Mr. Godman obtained a
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