Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

A Swallow's Terrace

1890; Nature Portfolio; Volume: 43; Issue: 1104 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1038/043176b0

1476-4687

Robert H. Read,

IN your issue of November 27, Mr. Warde Fowler gives a description of an unusually straggling nest of the swallow. An example to the contrary, of extreme neatness, which came under my notice a year or two ago, and which I still preserve, is the following:—My brother, on entering an old cottage in Somerset-shire which had been empty for a long time, found in one of the rooms a lath, broken at one end, depending from the ceiling at an angle of about 30°. The lath was about 18 inches long, and on the free end was a swallow's nest containing four very handsome eggs, heavily marked with large blotches of purple-brown. The nest was perfectly circular and shallow, like a tea-saucer, its external dimensions being about 5 inches diameter by 2 inches deep. It was built of the usual materials, the exterior being of mud, with which it was secured to the lath, and the lining of hay with an inner lining of feathers. Close by were other swallows' nests, just inside the top of a chimney and quite open to the sky, so that a covered site does not seem indispensable if the nest be sufficiently sheltered. In view of this and the preceding description of nest with its fragile support, it would not appear surprising to hear of a swallow building on the branch of a tree provided it were in a well sheltered situation.