Nesting Materials
Snt,—In some parts of the world even stranger nesting materials than those mentioned by Mr. Ian Niall are used. Like human builders, birds are sometimes obliged to use unsuitable material when nothing better 'is available. In some parts of the Middle East, where oil pipelines run for hundreds of miles across deserts, the telegraph-lines along- side the pipes are the only available substitute for trees, and every year hundreds of nests of hawks and other birds have to be removed from the cross-trees of the telegraph-poles. In many cases the nests
are made of fragments of the wire that was used for detonating the explosive charges employed for blasting rock during the cutting of the trench for the pipe across the desert. Bits of welding rods, left behind after the sections of pipe have been welded together, are also used, and in one nests live detonator was found. Such metal nests are a menace to the telegraph, and they cannot be very comfortable
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