BIRDS OF THE WAVE AND WOODLAND 119 



differences of note, and yet, if once recognised apart, the two 

 can no more be confused than the rook's and jackdaw's. Of 

 all birds I think it one of the stealthiest. Though building its 

 nest where discovery seems almost certain for so large a fowl, 

 it does its work with such secrecy that I doubt if any one in 

 England ever saw a turtle-dove with a twig in its beak, or 

 tracked it to its nest by its flight. I have found dozens of 

 turtle-doves' nests, but never one betrayed by the old birds. 

 Yet the grasshopper warbler, supposed by most people to be 

 one of the most subtle of nest-builders, and by its tiny size, 

 its mouse-like habits, and its concealing colour, so carefully 

 equipped by Nature for security, can be watched home to its 

 nest, as I know from my own schoolboy days, with unerring 

 certainty. It betrays itself in every action. You have only 

 to " locate " the small ventriloquist's cricket- voice and then 

 lie down among the herbage and wait. From impatience the 

 little birds are sure to show themselves, and if they are build- 

 ing they hop up and down, twist in and out of the lowest 

 plants, with material for their nest in their beaks, and you 

 have only to lie still and watch. 



But "watching" all day long will do no good with 

 turtle-doves. Whether building or not, they never tell you, 

 and when they catch sight of you they fly off at once, as if 

 they did not care where they flew to, or whether they ever 

 came back there again. Let them go, but come back yourself 

 later on to the same spot, approaching it, however, from the 



