ST. VALENTINE'S DAY 45 



contains an egg or two. These obviously life-mated 

 birds do not recognise social duties, and have not, 

 therefore, any kind of honeymooning to observe after 

 the breaking up of a winter flock, as most of the 

 other birds have. The flocking habit of nearly all 

 our birds makes it almost impossible for us to say 

 whether they mate for life or no. It may be that 

 those spring battles in which the valiant chaffinches, 

 for example, indulge, are normally undertaken by 

 birds of last year who have never mated, and merely 

 observed by the older birds as a knightly ceremony 

 to please their secure hens. We cannot urge so 

 flattering a presumption in favour of the sparrows, a 

 chattering string of which passes the window as we 

 write. Sparrows are never satisfied with the alloca- 

 tions of St. Valentine. Long after nests have been 

 started we see these bickerings, in which those who 

 ought to be staid married people join, openly flying 

 down from their nests when the nucleus of a sparrow 

 tangle passes their way. And the ungallant sparrow 

 is far less occupied in tilting with rivals for the smiles 

 of a lady than in joining them in one universal 

 attempted, though not very successful, bullying of the 

 hen that is the centre of their group. 



Such are the sparrows, but we see no reason why 

 the flocks of splendidly coloured tits should not split 

 now into the identical pairs of last summer, and leave 

 only the young to make new alliances. It is a point 

 fairly easy to test by means of the nesting-box. We 

 can, with practical certainty, get the birds into as 

 many boxes as we like, and at the right time it is 

 easy enough to catch them and mark them with tiny 

 leglets to be looked for again next summer. As far 



