On Wed, 21 Apr 2004 17:28:26 +0200, martin wrote:

On Tue, 20 Apr 2004 22:01:26 +0100, "David Hill"
wrote:

So they still remember how to do that do they.

Many, many years ago when I worked on the parks in Hastings we always had
pieces of wood about 12inches long pushed into the beds of polyanthus and
black cotton strung between them to form a confusing weave to keep the
sparrows off.

We always reckoned that they used them as part of their courtship ritual.

There's a photo in today's Leiden paper of a coot that has built a
nest around a fountain in the middle of a canal. The coot is sitting
on the nest with steady spray of water falling on it.

A bit off topic but check out the photo of the swallows nesting last
year ON TOP of a tubular wind chime under the porch of our front door
!!

Spot the guy in the middle !!

http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/pottery/Swallow/nest.htm