Birds-Nesting 



emerges from the hole, flits swiftly round the trunk, 

 and disappears through the leafage. And the young 

 soon learn to be nearly as cunning as their elders. 

 You can imagine them laughing at the stupid, groping 

 hand which tears out a bushel of that mass of straw, 

 hair, leather, paper, wool, rags, any and every sort of 

 refuse, which the jackdaw calls a nest, yet goes empty 

 away, they the while being ensconced in some inap- 

 proachable nook of the hollow trunk. The cushat 

 above sits still and unnoticed on her eggs all through 

 this operation, and it is watched from the ground by 

 a little tomtit tucked up under a dome of hay woven 

 round the stem of a thistle ; and not far off some other 

 tiny mothers listen unseen to those voices they dread 

 the most of all. Divided from the road by a dry 

 ditch is a bank that in summer is one rich confusion 

 of wild rose and bramble, foxglove and daisy and 

 speedwell and fern. There, on a bed of moss and hair 

 set in a tiny indentation, sits the sober mate to whom 

 the yellow bunting, from his perch on rail or hedge- 

 top, sings ever of ' a very, very little bit of bread and 

 no cheese ; ' and sometimes her black-headed relative 

 hatches her light-purple-spotted eggs hard by, having 

 ' flitted ' thither from the green rushes and the rough 

 grass of that marshy haugh which is her favoured 

 haunt. 



No boy could stop here ; for under a low single- 

 arched bridge not far away the road is crossed by a 

 stream, and in the pool made for passing horses and 



