LIFE IN A PINE WOOD 5 



But not one small bird could I find nesting in 

 the wood. This set me thinking on a question 

 which has vexed my mind for years How do 

 small birds safeguard their tender helpless 

 fledgelings from the ants? This wood swarmed 

 with ants: their nests, half hidden by the bracken, 

 were everywhere, some of the old mounds being 

 of huge size, twelve to fourteen feet in circumfer- 

 ence, and some over four feet high. As their eggs 

 were not wanted the ants were never disturbed, 

 and the marvel was how they could exist in such 

 excessive numbers in a naked pine wood, which 

 of all woods is the poorest in insect life. 



I have said to myself a hundred times that 

 birds, especially the small woodland species that 

 nest on or near the ground, such as the nightin- 

 gale, robin, wren, chiff-chaff, wood and willow 

 wrens, and tits that breed low down in old stumps, 

 must occasionally have their nestlings destroyed 

 by ants; yet I have never found a nest showing 

 plainly that such an accident had occurred, nor 

 had I seen anything on the subject in books 

 about birds; and of such books I had read 

 hundreds. 



The subject was in my mind when I received 

 evidence from an unexpected quarter that tender 

 fledgelings are sometimes destroyed by ants. This 

 was in an account of the wren by a little boy 

 which I came upon in a bundle of Bird and Tree 

 Competition essays from the village schools in* 

 Lancashire, sent on to me to read and judge from 



