MARCH MARRIAGES 



always started very cautiously. A crowd of rooks will 

 spend hours of a day watching the building of the first 

 two or three nests, and it may not be until after the 

 pioneers have eggs and even young that the remainder 

 of the colony make up their minds to start building in 

 the new home. These late nesters may be those who are 

 bachelors to-day, and are waiting until surplus spinsters 

 are to be found, sitting out in another rookery. 



JACK HERN is now deeply in family affairs ; his rule is 

 to make a right early start, being influenced 

 The perhaps by the extreme slowness of young 



Heronry herons in growing up; the story of the 

 nesting affairs is a very long one. Early in 

 February the great nests, that may measure four feet 

 across, are put into repair. Early this month (some- 

 times even in January) the eggs are laid. They hatch 

 in about four weeks, and it is not until the end of May 

 that the young birds, remarkably helpless creatures, 

 first flap from the nest to the boughs, and even in 

 August they are still seen about the nest-trees, clamour- 

 ing to their parents for food by day and by night. 



THE aristocrat of the tribe of titmice is that atom of a 

 grey-and-white, rosy-breasted bird called 

 Bottle-Tom long-tailed, whose nesting days come with 

 Blackthorn Winter. Its miracle of a bottle- 

 shaped, lichen-covered nest of two thousand feathers is 

 often set in a flowering thorn. Though like the other 

 tits in its dainty poses, the long tail is a badge of dis- 

 tinction, and it disdains tree-holes as nest-sites. Very 

 sociable, it never seems to be so happy as when one 



33 D 



