178 SUMMER 



Those birds of the common, which dislike wet, suffer 

 very much less from summer downfalls than the water-birds 

 themselves. It is unexpected, but ducks which delight in 

 water, whose young are water-proof, as it were, at birth, and 

 lovers of the stream, suffer much from heavy rain and wet 

 weather, overwhelming the feather walls of their nests. It 

 is not uncommon on this account for the duck to build in the 

 hollows of waterside trees ; but more often they nest on the 

 ground, some yards from the water, and during this time suffer 

 as if they were land-lubberly partridges from flood. But this is 

 g- -<^ a spring not a summer story. The duck are flying 



*'.'•. v5$k and may be shot when August begins. It is worth 

 notice because rare that pheasants will now and 

 again give up their ground- 

 nesting habit. In one in- 

 stance a pheasant's nest 

 was found, safe from flood 

 beneath or rain above, in 

 the upper part of a thick 

 spruce, her eggs laid on 

 the flattened deserted nest 

 of a squirrel. 

 As numbers increase, and nesting-sites become fewer, 

 naturalists begin to note a tendency among bush-nesting 

 birds to seek the ground. Thrushes are certainly more fond 

 of the ground than they once were. We have found their 

 homes well concealed in the midst of high kexes in a spinney. 

 It may have been no more than accident, but the nests were 

 in such case rather slighter, as if the bird was beginning to 

 come into line with the ground-nesters which naturally prefer 

 a hollow in the earth to a manufactured cup. Will the 

 weasels and rats drive back this company of earth-lovers to 

 the bushes they have deserted ? 



