76 BIRDS IN TOWN AND VILLAGE 



he had found, he told me, about thirty nests con- 

 taining eggs or fledglings; but this boy had gone 

 over the ground after him, and not many of the 

 nests had escaped his sharp eyes. 



I was satisfied that the young tits were quite 

 safe, so far as these youngsters were concerned, 

 and only regretted that they were such small boys, 

 and that the great nest-destroyer, whose evil 

 deeds they spoke of with an angry colour in their 

 cheeks, was a very strong boy, otherwise I should 

 have advised them to "go" for him. 



Oddly enough I heard of another boy who exer- 

 cised the same kind of cruelty and destructiveness 

 over another common a few miles distant. Walk- 

 ing across it I spied two boys among the furze 

 bushes, and at the same moment they saw me, 

 whereupon one ran away and the other re- 

 mained standing. A nice little fellow of about 

 eight, he looked as if he had been crying. I 

 asked him what it was all about, and he then 

 told me that the bigger boy who had just run 

 away was always on the common searching for 

 nests, just to destroy them and kill the young 

 birds; that he, my informant, had come there 



