nidify

“At the beginning of August, when we arrived in Weimar, almost everyone was away -- ‘at the Baths,’ of course -- except the tradespeople. As birds nidify in the spring, so Germans wash themselves in the summer.” George Eliot; The Spanish Gypsy; Worthington; 1890. “The bird’s ‘most favourite place to nidify in’, says an old book, ‘is in the impressed footmarks of cattle, made in damp soil, which offers, when hardened by the sun, a sufficient protection for the young.’” Michael Viney; Larksong an Abiding Sign of Life; Irish Times (Dublin); Jun 17, 2006.