204 



SUMMER 



tible relation between the number of eggs laid by any 

 species of bird and the obvious risks to which it is exposed. 

 Pheasants may lay a dozen eggs or more, plovers lay four, 

 and the nightjar only two. Yet all these eggs are laid on 

 the open ground, and young nightjars are born more help- 

 less than either young plovers or pheasants. Young birds 

 nursed to maturity in holes, in banks, or trees would seem 

 to be safeguarded against half the risks of infancy. Yet the 

 kingfisher lays eight eggs, the blue tit ten or a dozen, or 



YOUNG NIGHTJARS 



even more, against the woodpigeon's pair ; and while tits 

 are stationary, and kingfishers perhaps declining over the 

 country as a whole, woodpigeons have prodigiously multi- 

 plied within living memory. 



The education of the midsummer fledglings goes on 

 apace ; they soon become worldly-wise and distrustful of 

 humanity. Before the mock orange-blossom has ceased to 

 drench the walks with its heady odour of the solstice, the 

 eyes have vanished from the bushes. Already thinned, the 

 nimbler troops of young fare forth with their parents to wider 

 feeding-grounds ; and so, like the faintest movement of the 



