1888-89.] A Few Notes on Bird Life, &c. 263 



cuckoo, the hawfinch, the kingfisher, the crested grebe, and the 

 green woodpecker. 



The gold-crest, — " that mere shadow of a bird," as Gilbert 

 Wliite calls it, — which braves our severest winter, is a frequent 

 visitor to my friend's forty-feet-high Wellingtonia and the 

 large deodar near the house, and I have no doubt builds there. 

 There was once in my garden a nest of these birds in an 

 arbor-vitse, when a violent gale blew the nest to pieces. The 

 parent birds were in great distress, and the poor little help- 

 less young, only about half-fledged, were clinging with their 

 small claws to the shreds of their habitation. When I wit- 

 nessed the disaster, I ran into the house for a very small 

 basket, and in this collected as neatly as possible the frag- 

 ments of the nest, and placed the little creatures in the 

 centre. I fixed the basket in the tree, and had the satisfac- 

 tion of seeing the parent birds come close to me with food for 

 the brood, which were successfully reared without further 

 mishap. The gold-crest is one of our earliest spring song- 

 birds, and hds, as Yarrell says, a soft and pleasing song. 

 Last month, while resting in the Botanic Garden of our own 

 city, one came very near me, and sat singing on a fir bough 

 for some time. I know no bird so fearless of mankind, and 

 yet it is the smallest bird indigenous to these islands. Gold- 

 crests are supposed to be more numerous in England in winter 

 than in the summer, very large migrations of them coming to 

 our shores in the autumn. The nest is generally suspended 

 very cleverly from a fir bough. Colonel Montagu records 

 having kept a nest of eight young ones in his room for some 

 time, and noticed that the female came with food to them on 

 an average thirty- six times in the hour, and this continued for 

 sixteen hours. The male would not venture into the room, 

 yet the female would feed her young while the nest was held 

 in the hand. I once found a young gold-crest fluttering along 

 the ground, but unable to raise itself out of the reach of cats, 

 so for safety I took it into the dining-room and placed it near 

 the open window. The old bird came fearlessly into the room 

 and fed it all afternoon, and in the evening I placed it at 

 some elevation on a fir bough outside. The accounts of the 

 migrations of these diminutive birds are very interesting. 

 The late Mr Eobert Gray states that large flights of them 



