82 WILD LIFE AT HOME. 



upon it, and one day a robin actually rattled off 

 his song from the top of our rubbish-heap whilst 

 my brother was inside waiting for a bird of another 

 species to visit its nest. 



Our first attempt at photographing the bottle- 

 tits outside their nest did not yield a satisfactory 

 result, so we waited until the young ones were 

 older and both the parent birds were busily en- 

 gaged in feeding them, when the picture on page 79 

 was obtained. 



Although chaffinches are bold birds and sit 

 closely on their nests, they are by no means easy 

 to photograph without the help of some sort of 

 hiding appliance. 



We had tried many many times to photograph 

 a brooding female, and had often come within an 

 ace of success, but at the crucial moment either 

 the bird's courage gave out and she flew away, or 

 some tantalising accident, such as the slipping of 

 a twig, carefully bent out of the line of sight, 

 scared her off with an angry " spink, spink, spink." 

 Our new hiding appliances, however, speedily 

 changed all this, and had we only had the time we 

 could have made as many studies as we chose. The 

 illustration on page 81 of a male which had just 

 fed his chicks was taken in rather a dark place. 



A closer study of the domestic life of birds by 

 means of our hiding appliances has resulted in 

 the discovery of the fact that the males of many 

 species share family cares to a far greater extent 



