HEDGE-SPARROW OR DUNNOCK 101 



moving wings no longer merely a hedge-sparrow, but (at least for 

 //''?) a glory of grey and brown. 



Further observation will no doubt show that this account by no 

 means exhausts the love-displays of the dunnock. They are worth 

 investigation, and possibly would have been known, had it not been 

 for that unfortunate reputation for smug respectibility with which 

 he has been afflicted. 



Having set out to undermine the hedge-sparrow's established 

 reputation, it is perhaps best to do it thoroughly. It will no doubt 

 come, then, as a shock to "all the good and gentle" of which, 

 according to the Rev. C. Johns, the hedge-sparrow is, without 

 knowing it, the favourite, that a pair of these birds have been 

 detected in the act of stealing grass from the nest of a blackbird. 

 But it is right to add that thefts of this kind are not peculiar to 

 hedge-sparrows. Mr. E. Selous, who relates the above fact, states 

 that he has also seen a blue-tit pilfer a blackbird's nest, and a hen 

 chaffinch appropriate for its own use the whole material collected 

 by a pair of goldcrests. " Nests, in process of building by one bird, 

 are looked at by others as useful supplies of material for their o-Vvji-^ 

 little depots scattered over the country." 1 And Miss Turner teljs flffe: 

 she has seen a pair of yellow-wagtails impudently pilfer the down from 

 a duck's nest, though the owner was in it. The hedge-sparrow, there- 

 fore, is no worse than his fellows, and no better. He is, in short, 

 as I began by pointing out, simply a bird. 



There are few nests that seem more beautiful than his, when 

 it stands revealed with the blue gems of eggs lying snugly within, 

 and there seem to be few nests so frequently robbed, though often 

 well concealed. The eggs no doubt have a special attraction for 

 children, so they have apparently for rats and mice. "I have 

 known," writes Lord Lilford, " of seven out of eleven clutches of eggs 

 of this species thus destroyed in one season." The exposed positions 

 in which the nest is sometimes placed, added to the conspicuous 



1 Bird Life Glimpses, p. 205. 



