A NEST IN A GUN

 

A NEST IN A GUN - TRUE STORY

BIRDS often choose very strange places for nests; a couple are said to have tried to in the funnel of a railway engine, and it is not uncommon to find some bold enough to make a nest the very scarecrow which is meant to frighten them away!

But perhaps the most unlikely place of all is the muzzle of a cannon. When Cromwell seized held Windsor Castle, he planted a big gun in Curfew Tower to overawe the town of Windsor, and to command the bridge over the river Thames. Cromwell's gun has been out-of-date for many a year, and to fire it now would have a very unusual effect, for right in the mouth of the cannon a pair starlings have year after year built their nest. The keepers of the Tower do not allow the birds to be disturbed and in the very room from which, in old days, the gun used to roar at the Royalists, the parent starlings teach their little ones to fly. 

Reference:

1. Chatterbox 1903