NATURAL HISTORY OF NUNRURKHOLMK. 181 



one within the circumference, if so I may call the limits of the square I 

 am describing; but one day on looking out of my study -window, one flew 

 up from the ground immediately beneath it. Oddly enough, this very day 

 on which I am writing (June 28th.,) another paid a visit to our garden, 

 and was engaged for some time picking up insects on a flower-bed, ap- 

 parently for its young, which probably had been hatched somewhere not 

 far off, by the side of the stream. 



Number ten. If you were to judge of the country at large from the 

 portion of it which our garden represents, you would unhesitatingly say 

 that the Greenfinch was the commonest British Bird. It is positively 

 surprising the number of nests they build with us, "here and there and 

 everywhere;" at least it was so last year and the preceding one, but this 

 year (1858) we have had but very few of them about; I have only noticed 

 one nest, which was built in the top of a cypress tree about seven feet high, 

 in which a Blackbird hatched and brought up her brood last year. In fact 

 there are comparatively few nests of any birds in our garden this year, 

 in comparison that is to say, with the great numbers there have been in 

 previous seasons. 



Number eleven. I generally hold a conversation with many of the birds 

 I meet with in my walks, — Bobins, Bedstarts, Wagtails, Goldcrests, 

 Titmice, and others, and until I made a new acquaintance, new, that is 

 to say as to my knowledge of the name of my friend, having frequently 

 heard a sound as of the "Woodpecker tapping the hollow beech tree." 

 I had asked more than once "who 's that knocking?" The sound was 

 that apparently of a small Woodpecker, but I could not for some time 

 make out who struck the blows that resounded so clearly from the tree at 

 hand. At last I discovered the author to be the Oxeye, striking away 

 "con amore" in and on a Yew tree, one which corresponds, near the 

 opposite side of the house, with the one already mentioned. These trees are, 

 I may remark "en passant," the nurseries and bed-rooms of a great portion 

 of my large family of birds. There I heard another of these feathered 

 smiths "hammering away" somewhere among the boughs. I walked up to 

 see what he was about when he flitted out into a neighbouring thorn- 

 bush, (mem. Thornbush,) and there he stood confessed, swaying himself 

 up and down with all the energy imaginable; knocking his bill against the 

 branch he was on till it made it resound again. What he was getting I 

 cannot think, for the branch was a perfectly bare one, and it and every 

 part of the tree thoroughly sound. No doubt, however, he had good 

 reason for what he did. 



(To be continued.) 



VOL. VIII. 2 B 



