The most
curious nests, however, are the large stick structures on trees and
bushes, in the building and repairing of which the birds are in many
cases employed more or less constantly all the year round. These stick
nests vary greatly in form, size, and in other respects. Some have a
spiral passage-way leading from the entrance to the nest cavity, and the
cavity is in many cases only large enough to accommodate the bird; but
in the gigantic structure of Homorus gutturalis it is so large that, if
the upper half of the nest or dome were removed, a condor could
comfortably hatch her eggs and rear her young in it. This nest is
spherical. The allied Homorus lophotis builds a nest equally large, but
with a small cavity for the eggs inside, and outwardly resembling a
gigantic powder-flask, lying horizontally among the lower branches of a
spreading tree. Pracellodomtis sibila-trix, a bird in size like the
English house sparrow, also makes a huge nest, and places it on the
twigs at the terminal end of a horizontal branch from twelve to fifteen
feet above the ground; but when finished, the weight of the structure
bears down the branch-end to within one or two feet of the surface. Mr.
Barrows, who describes this nest, says: "When other branches of the same
tree are similarly loaded, and other trees close at hand bear the same
kind of fruit, the result is very picturesque." Synallaxis phryganophila
makes a stick nest about a foot in depth, and from the top a tubular
passage, formed of slender twigs interlaced, runs down the entire length
of the nest, like a rain-pipe on the wall of a house, and then becoming
external slopes upward, ending at a distance of two to three feet from
the nest.
Pages:
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
244
245