ROBIN'S NEST 



EARLY NESTS 



Even in the coldest spring, many of our winter resident 

 birds are nesting before the end of March. The earliest 

 birds to build are those which have a settled home, and as it 

 were a fixed and seasonal routine, and when their regular 

 spring nesting-place also provides them with shelter and 

 plentiful diet throughout the year, they are even earlier 

 than birds which have a fixed building-place, but desert it 

 during the winter. Rooks return annually to the same 

 rookery, and waste little time in determining where to build ; 

 but thrushes and robins which have spent the whole winter 

 in the garden begin building even earlier than the rooks. 

 Robins, hedge-sparrows, and some song-thrushes and black- 

 birds are so constant to their winter haunts in the garden 

 that we often know beforehand where they will nest, and 

 may be sure that they will begin several weeks before birds 

 of the same species in the open country. Colonies of rooks 

 in bare outlying clumps nest a fortnight or three weeks later 

 than those in sheltered situations ; and the occasional pairs 

 which take up new quarters in outlying positions are usually 

 latest of all. Robins are conspicuous in the garden all the 



