BIRD LIFE 247 



him, followed, with murderous intent, a party of five 

 or six, which had lit on a clump of old oaks in the 

 open, a couple of hundred yards or so away. It was 

 not until the trees, which were leafless, had been 

 searched for some seconds, and a suspicion was begin- 

 ning to suggest itself that a mistake had been made in 

 the marking, that at first one, then all, were discovered. 

 They stood rigid and motionless, with bodies stretched, 

 and wings pressed closely to the sides, most of them 

 not across, but in line with the branches on which 

 they had perched, looking more like broken boughs 

 than birds. No one passing under the trees, who had 

 not known the Turkeys were there, could, unless by 

 the purest accident, have noticed them. 



The devices adopted by birds themselves for the 

 protection of their eggs and young would fill a volume, 

 and very pleasant reading if well written it would be. 

 But space has, like the imagination of man, its limits, 

 and one only perhaps the most curious yet known 

 can be mentioned here. The Hornbills, like our own 

 Woodpeckers, are birds which breed in holes in trees. 

 In the forests of Borneo, which they frequent, are 

 snakes and lizards and many little carnivorous mammals 

 with a taste for eggs and young birds. As a protection, 

 presumably, from these, when the hen begins to sit, 

 her mate almost completely plasters up the entrance, 

 leaving only a crack open through which she puts her 

 beak for the food which he diligently supplies to her 

 and her family. 



The European Nuthatch in much the same way 



