70 Our Bird Friends. 



once saw a number of. inexperienced boys from 

 London get a rare fright. They saw a member 

 of the Tit family enter a hole in an old stump, 

 and one of them thrust his hand in with the 

 evident intention of capturing her, Init there was 

 such a spitting and hissing that he withdrew it 

 on the instant, and, securing: a stick, was about 

 to try to dislodge the unfortunate bird, when I 

 sprang from my hiding-place Avith a suddenness that 

 startled the little crowd, and saved the Tit from 

 further molestation. 



The Owls and the Petrels which I have men- 

 tioned enter and leave their nesting-holes during 

 the hours of twilight or darkness, and the Petrels 

 have a peculiar habit of beguihng the tedium of 

 brooding by uttering a warbling kind of chatter, 

 which they are said to indulge in both day and 

 night. 



V. The nests of the Great Crested Grebe, Lesser 

 Grebe or Dabchick, Wild Duck, Eider Duck, Pheasant 

 and Partridge, are all open-topped, but the parent 

 birds, when leaving them of their own accord, take 

 the wise precaution of carefully covering over their 

 eggs. None of these birds n]ake consijicuous-looking 

 homes for themselves. In fact, those of the Grebes 

 are in most cases mere rafts of rotting water- weeds 

 moored to surrounding reed stems, and thev look so 

 much like accidental collections of dead vegetaticn 

 that hardly one in a thousand people taken in- 

 discriminately out of the streets of any laige town 



