LECTURES. 47 



nuthatches had returned, clayed up the mouth of the hole and filled 

 up the interior with large pieces of rotten wood and leaves and had 

 laid seven eggs, after this the woodpecker returned and hatched off. 



The green plover or pee-wit has a nest which is hard to find until 

 you know how to find it. The popular idea is that when the bird 

 comes swooping round crying out and making a great fuss there is a 

 nest with eggs near, but this is quite a mistake. When plover have 

 eggs they make no noise at all, though they make noise enough when 

 they have young ones and before laying commences. 



To find the nest you must creep up to the hedge of the field 

 where the nests are and then suddenly show yourself and if you see 

 a bird get straight up off the ground and fly out of the field without 

 uttering a sound, there is sure to be a nest there with eggs in it. If 

 they see you coming they will run off the nest for some way before 

 flying and so deceive you as to its exact position. Anyone who has 

 made a study of finding plover's nests can mark down several plover's 

 nests at once, and can tell you by the way the bird flys how many 

 eggs there are in each nest and he will generally be right. 



Wood warblers give one a lot of trouble in nest finding. They are 

 birds you must watch in order to find their nests, which are always 

 very cunningly concealed under dead leaves and twigs in the woods 

 about here. The cock bird will sit on a particular twig and seems to 

 sing incessantly in the early Spring, and if you disturb him and drive 

 him away he quickly returns to the old twig and continues to sing 

 and does this till the nest is begun when he only sings at intervals. 

 Then is the time to watch and you will possibly be lucky enough to 

 see the hen carrying building materials to the nest. The only other 

 way to find the nest is to walk the piece of wood over very carefully 

 where you think the nest is until you put the hen off, and you can 

 always hear when you have done so by her cry which is very like that 

 of the willow wren, when disturbed from the nest. When you have 

 found the nest you will see that it is very like that of the chiffchaff 

 and of the willow wren, but the opening is higher up and it is never 

 lined with feathers as the nests of those birds are. 



The wood wren is not very plentiful about here, but there are two 

 or three pairs in all the larger woods in the neighbourhood. There 

 was a nest this Spring in the belt of trees by the side of the East 

 Gloucestershire cricket ground on the Old Bath Road, under the 

 beech tree at the end. These birds seem always to build under beech 

 trees if they can. 



