120 BIRDS OF THE WAVE AND WOODLAND 



Opposite direction. And if you flush them again, you may be 

 sure that their nest will be, or is. thereabouts : midway, 

 probably, between the two points of your approach. In a 

 few days go back to find the nest, and if you walk backwards 

 and forwards in the undergrowth, keeping your eyes upwards, 

 so as to look through the bushes from underneath, you will 

 find it, if it is there. For the hen-bird sits very close, and 

 goes off her nest with a flap of the wings that is unmistake- 

 able. Apart from this, if the bird is not at home, you may 

 often find the nest by seeing the white eggs in it from under- 

 neath, the yolks of them showing against the sky a delicious 

 pinky yellow. For the nest is a mere ghost of a nest — a 

 skeleton — and can easily be imitated by taking a handful of 

 thin birch and hazel twigs and sprinkling them at all angles 

 in a heap. Such a nest a pair of birds may easily build in 

 half an hour, and this, perhaps, is one reason why they are 

 never seen at work. Why they should be content with such 

 a skeleton of a nest or how so frail a network bears two bulky 

 nestlincrs and their mother, is a mysterv. But as Prior sines : 



" Each according to her kind 



Proper material for her nest can find, 



And bnild a frame which deepest thought in man 



Would or amend or imitate in vain." 



When they are on the wing, turtle-doves seem to like to 

 keep below the level of the tree tops, and seldom, therefore. 



