SOME GARDEN BIRDS 



Nature, and one about which there is yet a 

 great deal to be learnt. 



Though so many birds migrate regularly, 

 other kinds are practically stationary all the 

 year round ; the different tits, for example, do 

 not travel far as a rule. They are much at- 

 tached to their home districts, and no birds 

 keep so strictly to the one nesting place. 

 Year after year you will find a pair of tits 

 nesting in the same hole in some tree or wall. 

 I know of an apple-tree with a hole in a 

 bough wherein a pair of blue tits have nested 

 every spring as long as I can remember ; then 

 there are a pair of coal tits (coal tits are those 

 black-headed tits with a white patch on the 

 nape of the neck) which, year after year, have 

 bred in a certain hole in an old yew-tree ; and 

 the handsome great tits, a pair of which nested 

 for eight or nine seasons in the kitchen-garden 

 wall, only to return one spring and find that 

 their hole had been stopped up with mortar 

 when the wall was repaired the autumn before. 

 Another pair of great tits have for years made 

 their home in a disused pump in the backyard. 

 At one time when the pump was in daily use 

 they tried in vain to get a nest made in it. 

 Quantities of moss and rubbish were thrown 



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