26 TRAVELS OF A NATURALIST 



feathers. It was in a freshly-made hole (? made by the 

 Tit or by Nuthatch or Wryneck) [in a rotten birch stump 

 (Alston)] in the hollow stump of a decayed and broken 

 willow-tree, and was fully a foot below the entrance-hole. 

 The eggs were about three days incubated. One the 

 the last laid quite fresh. Fresh chips of decayed wood 

 lay under the hole, at the foot of the tree. The hole may 

 have been made by a Nuthatch (or Woodpecker?) and 

 afterwards abandoned, but the fresh appearance raised 

 the query in our minds as to whether the Tit itself in 

 some instances makes the hole.* The note of the bird 

 shot from this nest was, as far as we could judge, 

 precisely similar to that of our Parus palustris. 



In taking out the nest and eggs our ' tolle-knives ' 

 proved very useful, though had the wood not been quite 

 decayed, they would not have been found so effectual. 



I shot a Long-tailed Tit with a fine white head, a very 

 different-looking bird from our darker British species, or 

 race. 



We returned home rejoicing, but very hot, and after 

 breakfast we occupied the heat of the day in skinning the 

 various birds we had secured, and altogether we did not 

 do a bad day's work. 



May 25. 



Thursday, the 25th of May, was a hot day, but there 

 was more air than yesterday. We rose at 5 a.m., and, 

 after milk and bread and cheese, we took a boat and 

 rowed down Vange Vandet to a birch-wooded glen, about 

 two and a half miles from the hotel. 



Not long after landing we fell in with a small colony of 

 Fieldfares, and with some help from a couple of small boys, 

 we found ten nests, besides one with hard-set eggs. I took 

 the first nest, which contained four eggs, then Alston 

 took one with five, and the others, which respectively 

 * We afterwards proved it did. 



