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On the Lesser whitethroat.



Presently, as I left the vicinity of the nest, a little bird

alighted on one of my pergolas with its bill full of tiny moths ; it

was very restless and evidently wished me farther away ; at last it

flew over the hedge so as to approach the nest from the back out of

my sight, and I have since observed that it invariably does this when

I am anywhere near: if it reasoned deeply, it should be aware that

after I had looked down upon the nest and seen its babies, there

could no longer be any profit in the attempt to mislead me as to the

presence of its home, but its actions are probably instinctive and

therefore are persisted in though it may be aware that I am not

deceived thereby.


I don’t think the lesser whitethroat often builds in a garden

unless there are woods or copses close by: most of the nests which

I took in days gone-by were found in hawthorn bushes or hedges on

the outskirts of woods and at a height of not more than three to

four feet from the ground or in country lanes in wooded country :

that the bird should build at a greater altitude in suburban garden

shows good sense, for otherwise it would be pretty certain to he

raided by one of the numerous cats in the neighbourhood.


The lesser whitethroat is a very nervous little bird and

becomes extremely fidgety when anyone approaches its nest; more¬

over my experience of it is that if you remove a single egg from its

nest, it deserts it at once; indeed I believe that if you took out an

egg and replaced it, desertion would take place, just as I proved that

it did in the case of the common wren. In the latter case on one

occasion I stood at a distance watching a wren building, and unfor¬

tunately she caught sight of me and deserted immediately, never

completing the structure : yet in the absence of the mother I have

removed an egg from a wren’s nest with a metal spoon and she has

subsequently returned and continued to lay. A bird’s scent must

be very keen and yet I have heard men question whether it is not

entirely deficient in the sense.


One can never mistake the nest of the lesser whitethroat for

anything else, it is a very firmly built little structure and about the

size of that of the redpoll, perhaps a trifle smaller, but not in the

least like it; indeed, excepting that it is much more rigid it bears

some resemblance to the larger and usually somewhat flimsy nest of



