68 BIRDS, BEASTS, AND FISHES 



they build two or three before they are satisfied. Yet they 

 do not always make a new nest, but occasionally lay in an 

 old cradle. 



And when the ten little eggs are laid, the little hen begins 

 to sit, and if you disturb her she steals off like a mouse, and 

 it is reported will not return if so much as your finger be 

 thrust into the nest. But this statement, like many others 

 of the same kind, is misleading, for I have often tried the 

 experiment. Some will desert, others will not, even after 

 some eggs have been taken ; and upon one occasion I took 

 out every egg and replaced it again, and still the hen re- 

 turned to her nest, and hatched off the little fledglings, which 

 she and her little lord fed upon insects, worms, and cater- 

 pillars, especially those found upon the fenmen's gooseberry 

 bushes; for a pair of tomtits with a family are the best 

 destroyers of gooseberry cankers I know, and should there- 

 fore be encouraged in every garden. In white-hot July, too, 

 when the second brood is being reared, he is ever busy in 

 the garden grubbing amongst the insects for his young. 

 And when the young are growing, should you draw near 

 the nest, they will come tumbling out one after the other like 

 children bounding out of school, and the anxious parents 

 hop about on the bushes calling. And when they have left 

 the nest, you may see them, aye, to the number of ten, 

 sitting in a row on a bramble spray sunning themselves like 

 playful little children, and a pretty little group they make. 



And when the autumn rains and frosts and gales have 

 stripped the trees, you may see your little friends — many of 

 them having braved the sea-voyage — at eventide skulking 

 behind old stumps, or round about pollarded trees, where 

 they sleep — sometimes as many as twenty in a hole, keeping 

 each other warm. A hole in a reed-thatch, or even an old 

 sparrow's nest, is used at times for the same purpose. 



And then the boys go forth to stone the " king of birds," as 

 they call the wren in Norfolk — one party going on one side 

 of the leafless hedge, and another ruthless gang following on 



