on the black redstart and its breeding haunts.



303



myself amongst the rocks, proceeded to watch. Once the male flew

on a stone close to me, flickering his chestnut-red tail, and in his

bill were insects. He sat for a few minutes and I lay hardly

breathing, and then he disappeared. At once, drawing myself up,

I looked over the edge of the rock, my field-glasses ready should I

make out his whereabouts.


There he was not very far off, becoming visible as he moved

from boulder to boulder. Then I fixed him with the glasses, so that

I could see every feather. Up the slope of the mountain he went,

cautiously yet surely, and then suddenly after sitting upon a stone

for a minute or two, he popped down behind it and disappeared !

Ah ! but there he was again, and off.


What excited me was that whereas he had gone from sight

with his beak full of insects, he reappeared without them. So then

I knew that if only I could keep my eye upon that stone, I should

find the nest, but the stone in question was some way off and I felt

that if I ceased to look through the glasses it would be lost to sight

amongst all the mass of other stones and boulders.


Studying carefully the shapes of certain large rocks close to

where I saw the bird disappear, I ascended the slope, and as I drew

near my goal I saw the female bird, who flitted about anxiously.


It took a very short time to find the nest, which was in a

hollow on the ground under a smaller stone close to the larger one

where I had previously expected to find it, and in it were five young

ones. I was young in those days, and being very anxious to rear them,

took them with me in spite of their being only in the quilled stage.

But I had not brought out from England any insectivorous mixture

as I always did on subsequent occasions. At the hotel I obtained

some finely chopped raw-meat, hoping to be able to find something

more varied and more digestible on my return to Brieg on the fol¬

lowing day, but alas ! that day was very hot, and I only had a small

box in which to carry the young black redstarts, and all succumbed

during the long ride down the rough mountain path.


How I did wish I had left them to their parents and to

liberty. I felt a brute. Had they lived, they might have become

as tame as a brood of wheatears I once reared by hand, one of which

I kept, a most charming pet which would play hide and seek with



