124 Poachers and Poaching. 



one of the prettiest examples of bird architecture, 

 and is thickly felted with wool, feathers, and 

 spiders' webs. The eggs are white, speckled 

 with red. Montague kept a brood of eight 

 nestlings in his room, when he found that the 

 female bird fed them upon an average thirty-six 

 times an hour, and that this was continued six- 

 teen hours a day. Besides being built in pines, 

 the nests are sometimes attached to yews and 

 cedars. The cradle of the reed-warbler is 

 invariably hung upon the stalks of reeds, rushes, 

 and other aquatic plants ; and the whole struc- 

 ture is often swayed about so much by the wind 

 as not unfrequently to touch the water. The 

 bottle-shaped nest of the long-tailed tit is almost 

 as remarkable as its builder. It is exquisite 

 alike in form and material, and its interior is a 

 perfect mass of feathers. In one nest alone 

 were found two thousand three hundred and 

 seventy-nine, chiefly those of the pheasant, wood- 

 pigeon, rook, and partridge. Sometimes a great 

 many eggs are found in the nest of the long- 

 tailed titmouse as many as twenty, it is stated 

 and these are white, speckled, and streaked 

 with red. 



The colours of eggs in relation to birds and 

 the site of their nests is an exceedingly interesting 

 phase of the philosophy of the subject. It is 

 found as an almost invariable rule that birds 

 which lay white eggs nest in holes as a means of 



